1 


0^ 


pp.:: 
THEG 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT 


IN  THE  ! 


JEWISH  CHURCH 


THE   OLD   TESTAMENT 


IN  THE 


JEWISH  CHURCH 


TWELVE  LECTURES  ON  BIBLICAL  CRITICISM 


By  W.  EOBERTSON   SMITH,  M.A, 


SIETE  vol  ACCORTI, 
CHE  QUEL  DI  RETRO  MTTOVE  CIO  CHE  TOCCA " 
cost  NON  SOGLION  FARE  I  Pife  DE'  MORTL 


NEW   YORK 

D.  APPLETON  AND   COMPANY 

1881 


PREFACE. 

The  Twelve  Lectures  now  laid  before  the  public  had 
their  origin  in  a  temporary  victory  of  the  opponents  of 
progressive  Biblical  Science  in  Scotland,  which  has 
withdrawn  me  during  the  past  winter  from  the  ordi- 
nary work  of  my  Chair  in  Aberdeen,  and  in  the  invita- 
tion of  some  six  hundred  prominent  Free  Churchmen  in 
Edinburgh  and  Glasgow,  who  deemed  it  better  that  the 
Scottish  public  should  have  an  opportunity  of  under- 
standing the  position  of  the  newer  Criticism  than  that 
they  should  condemn  it  unheard.  The  Lectures  were 
delivered  in  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow  during  the  first 
three  months  of  the  present  year,  and  the  average 
attendance  on  the  course  in  the  two  cities  was  not  less 
than  eighteen  hundred.  The  sustained  interest  with 
which  this  large  audience  followed  the  attempt  to  lay 
before  them  an  outline  of  the  problems,  the  methods, 
and  the  results  of  Old  Testament  Criticism  is  suffi- 
cient proof  that  they  did  not  find  modern  Biblical 
Science  the  repulsive  and  unreal  thing  which  it  is  often 


PREFACE. 


represented  to  be.  The  Lectures  are  printed  mainly 
from  shorthand  reports  taken  in  Glasgow,  and  as  nearly 
as  possible  in  the  form  in  which  they  were  delivered  in 
Edinburgh  after  final  revision.  I  have  striven  to  make 
my  exposition  essentially  popular  in  the  legitimate  sense 
of  that  word — that  is,  to  present  a  continuous  argument, 
resting  at  every  point  on  valid  historical  evidence,  and 
so  framed  that  it  can  be  followed  by  the  ordinary  English 
reader  who  is  familiar  with  the  Bible  and  accustomed 
to  consecutive  thought.  There  are  some  critical  pro- 
cesses which  cannot  be  explained  without  constant  use 
of  the  Hebrew  Text ;  but  I  have  tried  to  make  all  the 
main  parts  of  the  discussion  independent  of  reference 
to  these.  Of  course  it  is  not  possible  for  any  sound 
argument  to  adopt  in  every  case  the  renderings  of  the 
English  Version.  In  important  passages  I  have  indi- 
cated the  necessary  corrections ;  but  in  general  it  is  to 
be  understood  that,  while  I  cite  all  texts  by  the  English 
chapters  and  verses,  I  argue  from  the  Hebrew. 

The  appended  notes  are  designed  to  complete  and 
illustrate  the  details  of  the  argument,  and  to  make  the 
book  more  useful  to  students  by  supplying  hints  for 
further  study.  I  have  made  no  attempt  to  give  com- 
plete references  to  the  modem  literature  of  the  subject. 
Indeed,  as  the  Lectures  have  been  written,  delivered, 
and  printed  in  three  months,  it  was  impossible  for  me 


PREFACE.  vii 

to  reconsult  all  the  books  which  have  influenced  my 
views,  and  acknowledge  my  indebtedness  to  each.  My 
effort  has  been  to.  give  a  lucid  view  of  the  critical  argu- 
ment as  it  stands  in  my  own  mind,  and  to  support  it  in 
every  part  from  the  text  of  Scripture  or  other  original 
sources.  It  is  of  the  first  importance  that  the  reader 
should  realise  that  Biblical  Criticism  is  not  the  inven- 
tion of  modern  scholars,  but  the  legitimate  interpretation 
of  historical  facts.  I  have  tried  therefore  to  keep  the 
facts  always  in  the  foreground,  and,  where  they  are 
derived  from  ancient  books  not  in  every  one's  hands,  I 
have  either  given  full  citations,  or  made  careful  reference 
to  the  original  authorities. 

The  great  value  of  historical  criticism  is  that  it 
makes  the  Old  Testament  more  real  to  us.  Christianity 
can  never  separate  itself  from  its  historical  basis  on  the 
Religion  of  Israel ;  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ  can- 
not be  divorced  from  the  earlier  revelation  on  which  our 
Lord  built.  In  all  true  religion  the  new  rests  upon  the 
old.  No  one,  then,  to  whom  Christianity  is  a  reality  can 
safely  acquiesce  in  an  unreal  conception  of  the  Old 
Testament  history;  and  in  an  age  when  aU  are  in- 
terested in  historical  research,  no  apologetic  can  prevent 
thoughtful  minds  from  drifting  away  from  faith  if  the 
historical  study  of  the  Old  Covenant  is  condemned  by 
the  Church  and  left  in  the  hands  of  unbelievers. 


viu  PREFACE. 

The  current  treatment  of  the  Old  Testament  has 
produced  a  widespread  uneasy  suspicion  that  this  his- 
tory cannot  bear  to  be  tested  like  other  ancient  histories. 
The  old  method  of  explaining  difficulties  and  recon- 
ciling apparent  contradictions  would  no  longer  be  tole- 
rated in  dealing  with  other  books,  and  men  ask  them- 
selves whether  our  Christian  faith,  the  most  precious 
gift  of  truth  which  God  has  given  us,  can  safely  base  its 
defence  on  arguments  that  bring  no  sense  of  reality  to 
the  mind.  Yet  the  history  of  Israel,  when  rightly 
studied,  is  the  most  real  and  vivid  of  all  histories,  and 
the  proofs  of  God's  working  among  His  people  of  old 
may  still  be  made,  what  they  were  in  time  past,  one  of 
the  strongest  evidences  of  Christianity.  It  was  no  blind 
chance,  and  no  mere  human  wisdom,  that  shaped  the 
growth  of  Israel's  religion,  and  finally  stamped  it  in  these 
forms,  now  so  strange  to  us,  which  preserved  the  living 
seed  of  the  Divine  word  till  the  fulness  of  the  time 
when  He  was  manifested  wiio  transformed  the  religion 
of  Israel  into  a  religion  for  all  mankind. 

The  increasing  influence  of  critical  views  among 
earnest  students  of  the  Bible  is  not  to  be  explained  on 
tlie  Manichciean  theory  that  new  views  commend  them- 
selves to  mankind  in  proportion  as  they  ignore  God. 
The  living  God  is  as  present  in  the  critical  construction 
of  the  history  as  in  that  to  which  tradition  has  wedded 


PREFACE.  ix 

us.  Criticism  is  a  reality  and  a  force  because  it  unfolds 
a  living  and  consistent  picture  of  the  Old  Dispensation  ; 
it  is  itself  a  living  thing,  which  plants  its  foot  upon 
realities,  and,  like  Dante  among  the  shades,  proves  its 
life  by  moving  what  it  touches. 

**  CosJ  non  soglion  fare  i  pife  de'  morLi." 

W.  ROBEKTSON  SMITH. 

Aberdeen,  A'pril  4,  1881. 


o 


JOL 


1881 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE  I. 

PAGE 

Criticism  and  the  Theology  of  the  Reformation       ,        1 


LECTURE  IL 

Christian  Interpretation  and  Jewish  Tradition        .       30 

LECTURE   III 

The  Scribes     .  .  .  .  .  ,55 

LECTURE   IV. 
The  Septuagint  .  .  .  .  .84 

LECTURE   V. 

The  Septuagint  (continued) — The  Canon 

LECTURE  VL 

The  History  of  the  Canon 

LECTURE   VIL 
The  Psalter     .  .  .  .  .  .     176 


xu 


CONTENTS, 


LECTURE   VIII. 

PAOE 

The   Traditional    Theory   of   the    Old    Testament 

History    ......     208 

LECTURE   IX. 

The  Law  and  the  History  of  Israel  before  the 

Exile        .  .  .  .  .  .241 

LECTURE   X. 

The  Prophets  .  .  .  .  .268 

LECTURE   XL 

The  Pentateuch  :  The  First  Legislation       .  .     305 

LECTURE   XIL 

The  Deuteronomic  Code  and  Levitical  Law  .  .     343 


Notes  and  Illustrations         ....     339 


Index  .......     443 


LECTUEE    I. 

CRITICISM  AND  THE  THEOLOGY  OF  THE  REFORMATION. 

I  HAVE  undertaken  to  deliver  a  course  of  lectures  to 
you,  not  with  a  polemical  purpose,  but  in  answer  to 
a  request  for  information.  I  am  not  here  to  defend 
my  private  opinion  on  any  disputed  question,  but  to 
expound  as  well  as  I  can  the  elements  of  a  well- 
established  department  of  historical  study.  Biblical 
criticism  is  a  branch  of  historical  science ;  and  I  hope 
to  convince  you  as  we  proceed  that  it  is  a  legitimate 
and  necessary  science,  which  must  continue  to  draw  the 
attention  of  all  who  go  deep  into  the  Bible  and  the  reli- 
gion of  the  Bible,  if  there  is  any  Biblical  science  at  all. 
It  would  be  affectation  to  ignore  the  fact  that  in 
saying  so  much  I  at  once  enter  upon  ground  of  con- 
troversy. The  science  of  Biblical  Criticism  has  not 
escaped  the  fate  of  every  science  which  takes  topics 
of  general  human  interest  for  its  subject  matter, 
rid  advances  theories  destructive  of  current  views 
upon  things  with  which  every  one  is  familiar  and 
in  which  every  one  has  some  practical  concern. 
You  remember  the  early  struggles  of  the  astronomy 


2  SOURCES  OF  HOSTILITY  lect.  i. 

of  Galileo  and  Newton.  The  evidence  for  the  dis- 
coveries of  these  great  philosophers  was  the  clearest 
that  has  ever  been  offered  in  support  of  a  new  truth. 
But  the  resistance  which  they  elicited  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  clearness  of  the  evidence.  It  gained 
its  strength  from  the  fact  that  the  astronomers  dealt 
with  very  familiar  phenomena,  with  such  things  as 
the  rise  of  the  sun  and  the  immovableness  of  the 
earth,  which  form  part  of  every  man's  daily  experience. 
About  these  phenomena  they  gave  a  theory  inconsistent 
with  all  current  ideas,  with  the  idioms  of  human  speech, 
and  even,  as  it  seemed,  with  the  daily  observations  of 
sound  common  sense.  They  seemed  to  destroy  the 
very  conditions  of  human  life.  If  the  sun  did  not  rise 
morning  by  morning,  if  the  earth,  instead  of  being 
stable  under  men's  feet,  was  never  in  the  same  place 
when  you  opened  your  eyes  in  the  morning  as  you  had 
left  it  in  when  you  went  to  bed,  a  gigantic  element  of 
uncertainty  appeared  to  be  introduced  into  the  most 
valuable  and  practical  convictions  of  mankind.  Views 
so  radical  seemed  to  be  necessarily  irreligious.  Not 
only  the  Church  of  Kome,  but  respected  Puritans  like 
John  Owen  {Works,  vol.  xix.  p.  310),  were  convinced 
that  the  Newtonian  philosophy  was  "  built  on  fallible 
phenomena  and  advanced  by  many  arbitrary  presump- 
tions against  evident  testimonies  of  Scripture." 

We  are  not  so  much  wiser  than  our  forefathers, 
and  our  theologians  are  not  so  much  superior  to  John 
Owen,  that  we  should  think  it  impossible  for  suspicions 


LECT.  I.  TO  BIBLICAL  CRITICISM  3 

equally  unfounded  to  attack  a  new  science  in  our  days, 
especially  a  science  like  that  of  Biblical  Criticism,  which 
conies  far  closer  than  anything  in  astronomy  to  the 
familiar  and  cherished  opinions  of  lovers  of  the  Bible. 
It  would  argue  indifference  rather  than  enlightenment, 
if  the  great  mass  of  Bible-readers,  to  whom  scientific 
points  of  view  for  the  study  of  Scripture  are  wholly 
unfamiliar,  could  adjust  themselves  to  a  new  line  of 
investigation  into  the  history  of  the  Bible  without 
passing  through  a  crisis  of  anxious  thought  not  far 
removed  from  distress  and  alarm. 

The  deepest  practical  convictions  of  our  lives  are 
seldom  formulated  with  precision.  They  have  been 
learned  by  experience  rather  than  by  logic,  and  we  are 
content  if  we  can  give  them  an  expression  accurate 
enough  to  meet  our  daily  wants.  And  so  when  we 
have  to  bring  these  convictions  to  bear  on  some  new 
question,  the  formula  which  has  suf&ced  us  hitherto  is 
very  apt  to  lead  us  astray.  For  in  rough  practical 
formulas,  in  the  working  rules,  if  I  may  so  call  them, 
of  our  daily  spiritual  life,  the  essential  is  constantly 
mixed  up  with  what  is  unimportant  or  even  incorrect. 
We  store  our  treasures  of  conviction  in  earthen  vessels, 
and  the  broken  pipkin  of  an  obsolete  formula  often 
acquires  for  us  the  value  of  the  treasure  w^hich  it 
enshrines.  To  return  for  a  moment  to  the  astronomical 
analogy :  the  fundamental  physical  truth  of  the  alter- 
nation of  night  and  day  was  embodied  in  the  formula 
of  the  sun's  daily  journey  round  our  globe.     Accurate 


THE  WORD  OF  GOD  lect.  i. 


enough  for  the  ordinary  affairs  of  human  toil,  this  for- 
mula was  thoroughly  false  for  the  purposes  of  astronomy. 
This  did  not  prevent  outraged  common  sense  from  rising 
to  condemn  the  astronomers  for  challenging  a  truth 
which  had  its  evidence  in  every  man's  experience. 
And  yet  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  evidence  of  experi- 
ence, w^hen  taken  as  a  whole,  bore  out  the  Newtonian 
astronomy,  and  did  not  agree  with  the  old  view. 

The  persuasion  that  in  the  Bible  God  Himself  speaks 
words  of  love  and  life  to  the  soul  is  the  essence  of  the 
Christian's  conviction  as  to  the  truth  and  authority  of 
Scripture.  This  persuasion  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  de- 
rived from  external  testimony.  No  tradition  as  to  the 
worth  of  Scripture,  no  assurance  transmitted  from  our 
fathers,  or  from  any  who  in  past  time  heard  God's 
revealing  voice,  can  make  the  revelation  to  which  they 
bear  witness  a  personal  voice  of  God  to  us.  The  ele- 
ment of  personal  conviction,  which  lifts  faith  out  of  the 
region  of  probable  evidence  into  the  sphere  of  divine 
certainty,  is  given  only  by  the  Holy  Spirit  still  bearing 
witness  in  and  mth  the  Word.  But  then  the  Word  to 
which  this  spiritual  testimony  applies  is  a  written  word, 
which  has  a  history,  which  has  to  be  read  and  explained 
like  other  ancient  books.  How  we  read  and  explain  the 
Bible  depends  in  great  measure  on  human  teaching. 
The  Bible  itself  is  God's  book,  but  the  Bible  as  read  and 
understood  by  any  man  or  school  of  men  is  God's  book 
])lus  a  very  large  element  of  human  interpretation.  In 
our  ordinary  Bible-reading  these  two  things,  the  divine 


LECT.  I.      AND  HUMAN  INTERPRETATIONS.  5 

book  and  the  human  understanding  of  the  book,  are  not 
kept  sharply  apart.  We  are  aware  that  some  passages 
are  obscure,  and  we  do  not  claim  divine  certitude  for 
the  interpretation  that  we  put  on  them.  But  we  are 
apt  to  forget  that  the  influence  of  human  and  traditional 
interpretation  goes  much  further  than  a  few  obscure  pass- 
ages. Our  general  views  of  the  Bible  history,  our  way 
of  looking,  not  merely  at  passages,  but  at  whole  books, 
are  coloured  by  things  which  we  have  learned  from 
men,  and  which  have  no  claim  to  rest  on  the  self- 
evidencing  divine  Word.  This  we  forget,  and  so,  tak- 
ing God's  witness  to  His  Word  to  be  a  witness  to  our 
whole  conception  of  the  Word,  we  claim  a  divine  cer- 
tainty for  opinions  which  lie  within  the  sphere  of 
ordinary  reason,  and  which  can  be  proved  or  disproved 
by  the  ordinary  laws  of  historical  evidence.  We 
assume  that,  because  our  reading  of  Scripture  is  suffi- 
ciently correct  to  allow  us  to  find  in  it  the  God  of 
redemption  speaking  words  of  grace  to  our  soul,  those 
who  seek  some  other  view  of  the  historical  aspects  of 
Scripture  are  trying  to  eliminate  the  God  of  grace  from 
His  own  book. 

A  large  part  of  Bible-readers  never  come  through 
the  mental  discipline  which  is  necessary  to  cure  preju- 
dices of  this  kind,  or,  in  other  words,  have  never  been 
forced  by  the  necessities  of  their  life  to  distinguish  be- 
tween the  accidental  and  the  essential,  the  human  con- 
jectures and  the  divine  truth,  which  are  wrapped  up 
together  in  current  interpretations  of  Scripture.     But 


6  VALUE  AND  DEFECTS  lect.  i. 

those  who  are  called  in  providence  to  make  systematic 
and  scholarly  study  of  the  Bible  the  work  of  their  lives 
inevitably  come  face  to  face  with  facts  which  force  them 
to  draw  those  distinctions  which,  to  a  practical  reader, 
may  seem  superfluous. 

Consider  what  systematic  and  scholarly  study  in- 
volves in  contradistinction  to  the  ordinary  practical  use 
of  the  Bible.  Ordinary  Bible-reading  is  eclectic  and  de- 
votional. A  detached  passage  is  taken  up,  and  attention 
is  concentrated  on  the  immediate  edification  which  can 
be  derived  from  it.  Very  often  the  profit  which  the 
Bible-reader  derives  from  his  morning  or  evening  portion 
lies  mainly  in  a  single  word  of  divine  love  coming 
straight  home  to  the  heart.  And  in  general  the  real 
fruit  of  such  Bible-reading  lies  less  in  any  addition  to 
one's  store  of  systematic  knowledge  than  in  the  privi- 
lege of  withdrawing  for  a  moment  from  the  thoughts 
and  cares  of  the  world,  to  enter  into  a  pure  and  holy 
atmosphere,  where  the  God  of  love  and  redemption 
reveals  Himself  to  the  heart,  and  where  the  simplest 
believer  can  place  himself  by  the  side  of  the  psalmist, 
the  prophet,  or  the  apostle,  in  that  inner  sanctuary 
where  no  sound  is  heard  but  the  gracious  accents  of 
divine  promise  and  the  sweet  response  of  assured  and 
humble  faith.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  undervalue  such 
use  of  Scripture.  It  is  by  this  power  of  touching  the 
heart  and  lifting  the  soul  into  converse  with  heaven 
that  the  Bible  approves  itself  the  pure  and  perfect  Word 
of  God,  a  lamp  unto  the  feet  and  a  light  unto  the  path ' 


LECT.  I.       OF  ORDINAR  V  BIBLE  -  BEADING.  7 

of  every  Christian.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  a  study 
which  is  exclusively  practical  and  devotional  is  neces- 
sarily imperfect.  There  are  many  tilings  in  Scripture 
which  do  not  lend  themselves  to  an  immediate  practical 
purpose,  and  which  in  fact  are  as  good  as  shut  out  from 
the  circle  of  ordinary  Bible-reading.  I  know  that  good 
people  often  try  to  hide  this  fact  from  themselves  by 
hooking  on  some  sort  of  lesson  to  passages  which  they 
do  not  understand,  or  which  do  not  directly  touch  any 
spiritual  chord.  There  is  very  respectable  precedent 
for  this  course,  which  in  fact  is  nothing  else  than  the 
method  of  tropical  exegesis  that  reigned  supreme  in 
the  Old  Cathohc  and  Mediaeval  Church.  The  ancient 
fathers  laid  down  the  principle  that  everything  in  Scrip- 
ture which,  taken  in  its  natural  sense,  appears  unedify- 
ing  must  be  made  edifying  by  some  method  of  typical 
or  figurative  application.^^^  In  principle  this  is  no  longer 
admitted  in  the  Protestant  Churches  (unless  perhaps  for 
the  Song  of  Solomon),  but  in  practice  we  still  get  over 
many  difficulties  by  tacking  on  a  lesson  which  is  not 
really  taken  out  of  the  difficult  passage,  but  read  into  it 
from  some  other  part  of  Scripture.  People  satisfy  them- 
selves in  this  way,  but  they  do  not  solve  the  difficulty. 
Let  us  be  frank  with  ourselves,  and  admit  that  there  are 
many  things  in  Scripture  in  which  unsystematic  and 
merely  devotional  reading  finds  no  profit.  Such  parts 
of  the  Bible  as  the  genealogies  in  Chronicles,  the  de- 
scription of  Solomon's  temple,  a  considerable  portion  of 
Ezekiel,  and  not  a  few  of  the  details  of  ritual  in  the 


8  VALUE  AND  LIMITATIONS  lect.  i. 

Pentateuch  do  not  serv^e  an  immediate  devotional  pur- 
pose, and  are  really  blank  pages  to  any  other  than 
systematical  and  critical  study.  And  for  a  different 
reason  the  same  thing  is  true  of  many  passages  of  the 
prophetical  and  poetical  books,  where  the  language  is  so 
obscure,  and  the  train  of  thought  so  difficult  to  grasp, 
that  even  the  best  scholars,  with  every  help  which 
philology  can  offer,  will  not  venture  to  affirm  that  they 
possess  a  certain  interpretation.  Difficulties  of  this  sort 
are  not  confined  to  a  few  comers  of  the  Bible.  They 
run  through  the  whole  volume,  and  force  themselves  on 
the  attention  of  every  one  who  desires  to  understand  any 
book  of  the  Bible  as  a  whole. 

And  so  we  are  brought  to  this  issue.  We  may,  if 
we  please,  confine  our  study  of  Scripture  to  what  is 
immediately  edifying,  skimming  lightly  over  all  pages 
which  do  not  serve  a  direct  purpose  of  devotion,  and  ig- 
noring every  difficulty  which  does  not  yield  to  the  faculty 
of  practical  insight,  to  the  power  of  spiritual  sympathy 
with  the  mind  of  the  Spirit,  which  the  thoughtful 
Christian  necessarily  acquires  in  the  habitual  exercise 
of  bringing  Scripture  to  bear  on  the  daily  needs  of  his 
own  life.  This  use  of  Scripture  is  full  of  personal  profit, 
and  raises  no  intellectual  difficulties.  But  it  does  not 
do  justice  to  the  whole  Word  of  God.  It  cannot  ex- 
haust the  whole  mind  of  the  Spirit.  It  is  limited  for 
every  individual  by  the  limitations  of  his  own  spiritual 
experience.  Reading  the  Bible  in  this  way,  a  man  comes 
to  a  very  personal  appreciation  of  so  much  of  God's 


LECT.  I.  OF  UNCRITICAL  STUDY.  9 

triitli  as  is  in  immediate  contact  with  the  range  of  liis 
own  life.  But  he  is  sure  to  miss  many  trutlis  which 
belong  to  another  range  of  experience,  and  to  read  into 
the  inspired  page  things  from  his  own  experience  which 
involve  human  error.  In  this  way  he  becomes  narrow, 
and  full  of  prejudices,  which  prevent  him  from  seeing 
that  the  Bible  is  larger  than  his  knowledge  of  it,  and 
that  other  men  whose  needs  are  different  from  his  may 
be  quite  in  the  right  in  getting  things  out  of  Scripture 
which  he  does  not  know,  does  not  need,  and  is  inclined 
to  call  false  or  dangerous.  Of  course,  in  proportion  as 
a  man's  spiritual  experience  widens,  and  his  Christian 
life  becomes  more  deep,  he  will  rise  superior  to  such 
prejudices.  But  no  man's  spiritual  life  is  so  large,  so 
perfectly  developed,  in  a  word,  so  normal,  that  it  can  be 
used  as  a  measure  of  the  fulness  of  the  Bible.  The 
absolute  value  of  the  Bible  as  the  manual  of  the 
spiritual  life  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  the  mirror  of  all 
normal  religious  experience.  In  other  words,  the  in- 
spired writers  were  so  led  by  the  Spirit  that  they  per- 
fectly understood,  and  perfectly  recorded,  every  word 
which  God  spoke  to  their  hearts.  But  the  ripest 
Christian  appropriates  the  perfect  record  in  an  imper- 
fect way,  and  with  a  certain  admixture  of  positive  error, 
which  comes  out  as  soon  as  he  attempts  to  ex]3ress  in 
his  own  words  the  truths  he  has  learned  from  Scripture. 
The  Church,  therefore,  which  aims  at  an  all-sided  and 
catholic  view,  cannot  be  content  with  so  much  of  truth 
as  has  practically  approved  itself  to  one  man,  or  any 


10  SYSTEMATIC  BIBLE-STUDY  lect.  i. 

number  of  men,  all  fallible  and  imperfect.  What  she 
desires  to  obtain  is  the  sum  of  all  those  normal  views  of 
divine  truth  which  are  embodied  in  the  experience  of 
the  inspired  writers.  She  must  try  to  get  the  whole 
meaning  of  every  prophet,  psalmist,  or  apostle, — not  by 
the  rough  and  ready  method  of  culling  from  a  chapter 
as  many  truths  as  at  once  commend  themselves  to  a 
Christian  heart,  but  by  taking  up  each  piece  of  Biblical 
authorship  as  a  whole,  realising  the  position  of  the 
writer,  and  following  out  in  its  minutest  details  the 
progress  of  his  thought.  And  in  this  process  the  Church, 
or  the  trained  theologian  labouring  in  the  service  of  the 
Church,  must  not  be  discouraged  by  finding  much  that 
seems  strange,  foreign  to  current  experience,  or,  at  first 
sight,  positively  unedifying.  It  will  not  do  to  make 
our  notions  the  measure  of  God's  dealings  with  His 
people  of  old.  The  systematic  student  must  first,  and 
above  all,  do  justice  to  his  text.  When  he  has  done 
this,  the  practical  use  will  follow  of  itself. 

I  am  anxious  that  you  should  at  the  very  outset 
form  a  clear  conception  of  the  purpose  and  utility  of 
this  kind  of  study.  Observe  that  the  exhaustive  and 
all-sided  knowledge  of  the  meaning  of  the  Bible  which 
we  are  now  contemplating  is  something  quite  distinct 
from  a  complete  knowledge  of  the  system  of  theological 
doctrine.  Systematic  theology,  the  sort  of  theology  of 
which  the  Westminster  Confession  and  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles  are  compends,  may  be  called  the  abstract  theory 
of  the  truths  of  religion.     It  tries  to  refer  the  facts  and 


LECT.  I.        AND  SYSTEMATIC  THEOLOGY.  11 

experiences  of  the  religious  life,  and  the  whole  method 
of  revelation  and  redemption,  to  general  principles,  and 
to  explain  all  details  under  these  principles  in  a  philo- 
sophical and  logical  sequence.  In  doing  this  systematic 
theology  goes  beyond  the  Bible,  although  it  builds  upon 
it.  The  abstract  terms  which  it  uses,  the  philosophical 
notions  which  it  develops,  are  often  not  Biblical.  The 
Bible  did  not  need  them,  because,  for  the  most  part,  it 
abstains  from  systematic  and  philosophic  discussions, 
and  treats  of  the  relations  of  God  to  man  and  of  the 
work  of  redemption  in  a  directly  experimental  manner. 
For  example,  you  will  not  find  in  the  Bible  any  exposi- 
tion of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  any  definition  of 
person  and  substance  and  essence,  and  all  the  other 
terms  of  which  the  chapter  about  the  Trinity  in  every 
theological  system  is  full.  Nor  will  you  find  any  dis- 
cussion as  to  the  theory  of  the  Person  of  Christ,  or  any 
of  those  definitions  as  to  the  two  natures,  the  two  wills, 
the  communicatio  idiomatum,  and  all  the  other  points 
which  arise  when  we  attempt  to  give  a  theory  of  the 
Person  of  our  Lord.  In  place  of  such  abstract  and 
theoretical  discussion,  the  Bible  sets  before  us  the  living 
Christ  in  experimental  manifestation,  as  He  actually 
lived  and  taught,  suffered  and  rose  again ;  it  sets  before 
us  the  Father,  Son,  and  Spirit  as  revealed  in  the  actual 
work  of  redemption,  and  in  that  multiplicity  of  relations 
to  man  which  forms  the  experimental  basis  of  all  dog- 
matic speculation  on  the  Divine  Being. 

Now  up  to  the  time  of  the  Reformation  the  only 


12  THE  BIBLE  AND  lect.  i. 

kind  of  theological  study  whicli  was  thought  worthy  of 
serious  attention  was  the  study  of  dogma.  People's 
daily  spiritual  life  was  supposed  to  be  nourished,  not  by 
Scripture,  but  by  the  Sacraments.  The  experimental 
use  of  Scripture,  so  dear  to  Protestants,  was  not  recog- 
nised as  one  of  the  main  purposes  for  which  God  has 
given  us  the  Bible.  The  use  of  the  Bible  was  to  furnish 
proof  texts  for  the  theologians  of  the  Church,  and  the 
doctrines  of  the  Church  as  expressed  in  the  Creeds 
were  the  necessary  and  sufficient  object  of  faith.  The 
believer  had  indeed  need  of  Christ  as  well  as  of  a  creed, 
but  Christ  was  held  forth  to  him,  not  in  the  Bible,  but  in 
the  Mass.  The  Bible  was  the  source  of  theological 
knowledge  as  to  the  mysterious  doctrines  of  Eevelation, 
but  the  Sacraments  were  the  means  of  grace. 

The  Eeformation  changed  all  this,  and  brought  the 
Bible  to  the  front  as  a  living  means  of  grace.  How  did 
it  do  so  ?  Not,  as  is  sometimes  superficially  imagined, 
by  placing  the  infallible  Bible  in  the  room  of  the  infal- 
lible Church,  but  by  a  change  in  the  whole  conception 
of  faith,  of  the  plan  and  purpose  of  Eevelation,  and  of 
the  operation  of  the  means  of  grace. 

Saving  faith,  says  Luther,  is  not  an  intellectual 
assent  to  a  system  of  doctrine  superior  to  reason,  but  a 
personal  trust  on  God  in  Christ,  appropriation  of  God's 
personal  word  and  promise  of  redeeming  love.  God's 
grace  is  just  the  manifestation  of  His  redeeming  love, 
and  the  means  of  grace  are  the  means  which  He  adopts 
to  bring  His  word  of  love  to  our  ears  and  to  our  hearts. 


LECT.  I.  THE  REFORMATION.  13 

All  means  of  grace,  all  sacraments,  have  value  only  in 
so  far  as  they  bring  to  us  a  personal  Word,  that  Word 
which  is^  contained  in  the  gospel  and  incarnate  in  our 
Lord.  The  supreme  value  of  the  Bible  does  not  lie  in 
the  fact  that  it  is  the  ultimate  source  of  theology,  but  in 
the  fact  that  it  contains  the  whole  message  of  God's 
love,  that  it  is  the  personal  message  of  that  love  to  me, 
not  doctrine  but  promise,  not  the  display  of  God's  meta- 
physical essence  but  of  His  redeeming  purpose,  in  a  word, 
of  Himself  as  my  God.  Filled  with  this  new  light  as  to 
the  meaning  of  Scripture,  Luther  displays  profound  con- 
tempt for  the  grubbing  theologians  who  treated  the 
Bible  as  a  mere  storehouse  of  proof  texts,  dealing  with 
it,  as  he  says  of  Tetzel,  "  like  a  sow  with  a  bag  of 
oats."  The  Bible  is  a  living  thing.  The  Middle  Ages 
had  no  eye  for  anythiug  but  doctrinal  mysteries,  and 
where  these  were  lacking  saw  only,  as  Luther  com- 
plained, bare  dead  histories  "  which  had  simply  taken 
place  and  concerned  men  no  more."  ISTay,  say  the 
Reformers.  This  history  is  the  story  of  God's  dealings 
with  His  people  of  old.  The  heart  of  love  which  He 
opened  to  them,  is  still  a  heart  of  love  to  us.  The  great 
pre-eminence  of  the  Bible  history  is  that  in  it  God  speaks 
— speaks  not  in  the  language  of  doctrine  but  of  personal 
grace,  which  we  have  a  right  to  take  home  to  us  now, 
just  as  it  was  taken  home  by  His  ancient  people/^^ 

In  a  word,  the  Bible  is  a  book  of  Experimental 
Religion,  in  which  the  converse  of  God  with  His  people 
is  depicted  in  all  its  stages  up  to  the  full  and  abiding 
2 


14  THE  BIBLE  AND  lect.  i. 

manifestation  of  saving  love  in  the  person  of  Jesus 
Christ.  God  has  no  message  to  the  believing  soul 
which  the  Bible  does  not  set  forth,  and  set  forth  not  in 
bare  formulas  but  in  living  and  experimental  form,  by- 
giving  the  actual  history  of  the  need  which  the  message 
supplies,  and  by  showing  how  holy  men  of  old  received 
the  message  as  a  light  to  their  own  darkness,  a  comfort 
and  a  stay  to  their  own  souls.  And  so  to  appropriate 
the  divine  message  for  our  wants,  we  need  no  help  of 
ecclesiastical  tradition,  no  authoritative  Churchly  exe- 
gesis. All  that  we  need  is  to  put  ourselves  by  the 
side  of  the  psalmist,  the  prophet,  or  the  apostle,  to  enter 
by  spiritual  sympathy  into  his  experience,  to  feel  our 
sin  and  need  as  he  felt  them,  and  to  take  home  to  us,  as 
he  took  them,  the  gracious  words  of  divine  love.  This 
it  is  which  makes  the  Bible  perspicuous  and  precious  to 
every  one  who  is  taught  of  the  Spirit. 

The  history  of  the  Eeformation  shows  that  these 
views  fell  upon  the  Church  with  all  the  force  of  a  new 
discovery.  It  was  nothing  less  than  the  resurrection 
of  the  living  Word,  buried  for  so  many  ages  under  the 
dust  of  a  false  interpretation.  Now  we  all  acknowledge 
the  debt  which  we  owe  to  the  Eeformers  in  this 
matter.  We  are  agreed  that  to  them  we  owe  our  open 
Bible ;  but  we  do  not  always  understand  what  this  gift 
means.  We  are  apt  to  think  and  speak  as  if  the 
Reformation  had  given  us  the  Bible  by  removing  artifi- 
cial restrictions  on  its  translation  and  circulation  among 
the  laity.     There  is  a  measure  of  truth  in  this  view. 


LECT.  I.  THE  REFORMATION.  15 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  there  were  translations  in  the 
vulgar  tongues  long  before  Luther.  The  Bible  was  never 
wholly  withdrawn  from  the  laity,  and  the  preaching  of 
the  Word  was  the  characteristic  office  of  the  Friars,  and 
the  great  source  of  that  popidar  influence  which  they 
strained  to  the  uttermost  against  the  Reformation. 

The  real  importance  of  Luther's  work  was  not  that 
he  put  the  Bible  into  the  hands  of  the  laity,  but  that  he 
vindicated  for  the  Word  a  new  use  and  a  living  interest 
which  made  it  impossible  that  it  should  not  be  read  by 
them.  We  are  not  disciples  of  the  Eeformation  merely 
because  we  have  the  Bible  in  our  hands  and  appeal  to 
it  as  the  supreme  judge.  Luther's  opponents  appealed 
to  the  Bible  as  confidently  as  he  did.  But  they  did 
not  understand  the  Bible  as  he  did.  To  them  it  was  a 
book  revealmg  abstract  doctrines.  To  him  it  was  the 
record  of  God's  words  and  deeds  of  love  to  the  saints  of 
old,  and  of  the  answer  of  their  inmost  heart  to  God. 
This  conception  changes  the  whole  perspective  of 
Biblical  study,  and,  unless  our  studies  are  conformed  to 
it,  we  are  not  the  children  of  the  Pieformation. 

The  Bible  on  the  Eeformation  view  is  a  history,  the 
history  of  the  work  of  redemption,  from  the  fall  of  man 
to  the  ascension  of  the  risen  Saviour  and  the  mission  of 
•the  Spirit  by  which  the  Church  still  lives.  But  the 
history  is  not  a  mere  chronicle  of  supernatural  deeds  and 
revelations.  It  is  the  inner  history  of  the  converse  of 
God  with  man  that  gives  the  Bible  its  peculiar  worth. 
The  story  of  God's  grace  is  expounded  to  us  by  the 


16  THE  BIBLE  AS  THE  RECORD         lect.  i. 

psalmists,  prophets,  and  apostles,  as  they  realised  it  in 
their  own  lives.  For  the  progress  of  Eevelation  was  not 
determined  arbitrarily.  No  man  can  learn  anything 
aright  about  God  and  His  love,  unless  the  new  truth 
come  home  to  his  heart  and  grow  into  his  life.  What  is 
still  true  of  our  appropriation  of  revealed  truth  was 
true  also  of  its  first  communication.  Inspired  men 
were  able  to  receive  and  set  down  new  truths  of  Eeve- 
lation as  a  sure  rule  for  our  guidance,  because  these 
truths  took  hold  of  them  with  a  personal  grasp,  and 
supplied  heartfelt  needs.  Thus  the  Eecord  of  Eevela- 
tion becomes,  so  to  speak,  the  autobiography  of  the 
Church — the  story  of  a  converse  with  God,  in  which  the 
saints  of  old  actually  lived. 

Accordingly,  the  first  business  of  the  Eeformation 
theologian  is  not  to  crystallise  Bible  truths  into  doctrines, 
but  to  follow,  in  all  its  phases,  the  manifold  inner  his-  * 
tory  of  the  religious  life  which  the  Bible  unfolds.  It  is 
his  business  to  study  every  word  of  Scripture,  not  merely 
by  gTammar  and  logic,  but  in  its  relation  to  the  life  of 
the  writer,  and  the  actual  circumstances  in  which  God's 
Word  came  to  him.  Only  in  this  way  can  we  hope  to 
realise  the  whole  rich  personal  meaning  of  the  Word  of 
grace.  For  God  never  spoke  a  word  to  any  soul  that 
was  not  exactly  fitted  to  the  occasion  and  the  man.  ■ 
Separate  it  from  this  context,  and  it  is  no  longer  the 
same  perfect  Word. 

Now  the  great  goodness  of  God  to  us,  in  His  gift  of 
the  Bible,  appears  very  specially  in  the  copious  material 


LECT.  I.     OF  THE  COURSE  OF  REVELATION.  17 

He  has  supplied  for  our  assistance  in  this  task  of  histo- 
rical exegesis.  There  are  large  passages  in  the  Bible, 
especially  in  the  Old  Testament,  which,  taken  apart 
from  the  rest  of  the  book,  would  appear  quite  deficient 
in  spiritual  instruction.  Crude  rationalism  often  pro- 
poses to  throw  these  aside  as  mere  lumber,  forming  no 
integral  part  of  the  Eecord  of  Eevelation.  And,  on  the 
other  hand,  a  narrowly  timid  faith  sometimes  insists 
that  such  passages,  even  in  their  isolation,  must  be 
prized  as  highly  as  the  Psalms  or  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount.  Both  these  views  are  wrong,  and  both  err  in  the 
same  way,  by  forgetting  that  a  Bible  which  shall  enable 
us  to  follow  the  inner  life  of  the  course  of  Eevelation 
must  contain,  not  only  words  of  grace  and  answers  of 
faith,  but  as  much  of  the  ordinary  history,  the  everyday 
life,  and  the  current  thoughts  of  the  people  to  whom 
Eevelation  came,  as  will  enable  us  to  enter  into  their 
circumstances,  and  receive  the  Word  as  they  received  it. 
From  this  point  of  view  we  can  recognise  the  hand  of  a 
wise  Providence  in  the  circumstance  that  the  Old  Testa- 
ment contains,  in  far  larger  proportion  than  the  Xew, 
matter  of  historical  and  archaeological  interest,  which 
does  not  serve  a  direct  purpose  of  edification.  For,  in 
the  study  of  the  New  Testament,  we  are  assisted  in  the 
work  of  historical  interpretation  by  a  large  contemporary 
literature  of  profane  origin,  whereas  we  have  almost  no 
contemporary  helps  for  the  study  of  Hebrew  antiquity, 
beyond  the  books  which  were  received  into  the  Jewish 
Canon.^'^ 


18  THE  HUMAN  SIDE  lect.  i. 

The  kind  of  Bible  study  which  I  have  indicated  is 
followed  more  or  less  instinctively  by  every  intelligent 
reader.  Every  Christian  takes  home  words  of  promise, 
of  comfort,  or  of  warning,  by  putting  himself  in  the 
place  of  the  first  hearers  of  the  Word,  and  uses  the  Bible 
devotionally  by  borrowing  the  answer  spoken  by  the 
faith  of  apostles  or  psalmists.  And  the  diligent  reader 
soon  learns  that  the  profit  of  these  exercises  is  propor- 
tioned to  the  accuracy  with  which  he  can  compare  his 
situations  and  needs  with  those  underlying  the  text 
which  he  appropriates.  But  the  systematic  study  of 
Scripture  must  rise  above  the  merely  instinctive  use  of 
sound  principles.  To  get  from  the  Bible  all  the  instruc- 
tion which  it  is  capable  of  yielding,  we  must  apprehend 
the  true  method  of  study  in  its  full  range  and  scope, 
obtain  a  clear  grasp  of  the  principles  involved,  and 
apply  them  systematically  with  the  best  help  that 
scholarship  supplies.  Let  us  consider  how  this  is  to  be 
done. 

In  the  Bible,  God  and  man  meet  together,  and  hold 
such  converse  as  is  the  abiding  pattern  and  rule  of  all 
religious  experience.  In  this  simple  fact  lies  the  key  to 
all  those  puzzles  about  the  divine  and  human  side  of  the 
Bible  with  which  people  are  so  much  exercised.  We 
hear  many  speak  of  the  human  side  of  the  Bible  as 
if  there  were  something  dangerous  about  it,  as  if  it 
ought  to  be  kept  out  of  sight  lest  it  tempt  us  to  forget 
that  the  Bible  is  the  Word  of  God.  And  there  is  a  wide- 
spread feeling  that,  though  the  Bible  no  doubt  has  a 


LECT.  I.  OF  THE  BIBLE,  19 

human  side,  a  safe  and  edifying  exegesis  must  confine 
itself  to  the  divine  side.  This  point  of  view  is,  however, 
thoroughly  unprotestant  and  unevangelical — a  survival 
of  the  mediaeval  exegesis  which  buried  the  true  sense  of 
Scripture.  Of  course,  as  long  as  you  hold  the  mediaeval 
view — that  the  whole  worth  of  Eev elation  lies  in  abstract 
doctrines  supernaturally  communicated  to  the  intellect 
and  not  to  the  heart — the  idea  that  there  is  a  human 
life  in  the  Bible  is  purely  disturbing.  But  if  the  Bible 
sets  forth  the  personal  converse  of  God  with  man,  it  is 
absolutely  essential  to  look  at  the  human  side.  The  pro- 
phets and  psalmists  were  not  mere  impassive  channels 
through  whose  lips  or  pens  God  poured  forth  an  abstract 
doctrine.  He  spoke  not  only  through  them,  but  to  them 
and  in  them.  They  had  an  intelligent  share  in  the 
Divine  converse  with  them;  and  we  can  no  more 
understand  the  Divine  Word  without  taking  them  into 
account  than  we  can  understand  a  human  conversation 
without  taking  account  of  both  interlocutors.  To  try  to 
suppress  the  human  side  of  the  Bible,  in  the  interests  of 
the  purity  of  the  Divine  Word,  is  as  great  a  folly  as  to 
think  that  a  father's  talk  with  his  child  can  be  best  re- 
ported by  leaving  out  everything  which  the  cliild  said, 
thought,  and  felt. 

The  first  condition  of  a  sound  understanding  of  Scrip- 
ture is  to  give  full  recognition  to  the  human  side,  to 
master  the  whole  situation  and  character  and  feelings  of 
each  human  interlocutor  who  has  a  part  in  the  drama 
of  Revelation.       Nay^  the  vjIioU  business  of  scholarly 


20  THE  HISTORICAL  lect.  i. 

exegesis  lies  with  this  human  side.  All  that  earthly  study 
and  research  can  do  for  tlie  reader  of  Scripture  is  to  put 
him  in  the  position  of  the  man  to  whose  heart  God  first 
spoke.  "What  is  more  than  this  lies  beyond  our  wisdom. 
It  is  only  the  Spirit  of  God  which  can  make  the  Word 
a  living  word  to  our  hearts,  as  it  was  a  living  word  to 
him  who  first  received  it.  This  is  the  truth  which  the 
Westminster  Confession  expresses  when  it  teaches,  in 
harmony  with  all  the  Eeformed  Symbols,  that  our  full 
persuasion  and  assurance  of  the  infallible  truth  and 
divine  authority  of  Scripture  is  from  the  inward  work 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  bearing  witness  by  and  with  the 
Word  in  our  hearts. 

And  here,  as  we  at  once  perceive,  the  argument 
reaches  a  practical  issue.  We  not  only  see  that  the 
principles  of  the  Eeformation  demand  a  systematic 
study  of  Scripture  upon  lines  of  research  which  were 
foreign  to  the  Church  before  the  Eeformation ;  but  we 
are  able  to  fix  the  method  by  which  such  study  must 
be  carried  on.  It  is  our  duty  as  Protestants  to  in- 
terpret Scripture  historically.  The  Bible  itself  has 
a  history.  It  was  not  written  at  one  time,  or  by  a 
single  pen.  It  comprises  a  number  of  books  and 
pieces  given  to  the  Church  by  many  instrumentali- 
ties and  at  various  times.  It  is  our  business  to  separate 
these  elements  from  one  another,  to  examine  them  one 
by  one,  and  to  comprehend  each  piece  in  the  sense 
which  it  had  for  the  first  writer,  and  in  its  relation  to 
the  needs  of  God's  people  at  the  time  when  it  was 


LECT.  I.  STUDY  OF  SCRIPTURE.  21 

written.  lu  proportion  as  we  succeed  in  this  task,  the 
mind  of  the  Revealer  in  each  of  His  many  communica- 
tions with  mankind  will  become  clear  to  us.  We  shall 
be  able  to  follow  His  gracious  converse  with  His  people 
of  old  from  point  to  point.  Instead  of  appropriating  at 
random  so  much  of  the  Word  as  is  at  once  perspicuous, 
or  guessing  darkly  at  the  sense  of  things  obscure,  we 
shall  learn  to  understand  God's  teaching  in  its  natural 
connection.  By  this  means  we  shall  be  saved  from 
arbitrariness  in  our  interpretations.  For  of  this  we  may 
be  assured,  that  there  was  nothing  arbitrary  in  God's 
plan  of  revelation.  He  spoke  to  the  prophets  of  old,  as 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  tells  us,  "  in  many  parts  and 
in  many  ways."  There  was  variety  in  the  method  of 
His  revelation ;  and  each  individual  oracle,  taken  by 
itself,  was  partial  and  incomplete.  But  none  of  these 
things  was  without  its  reason.  The  method  of  revela- 
tion was  a  method  of  education.  God  spake  to  Israel 
as  one  speaks  to  tender  weanlings  (Isa.  xxviii.  9),  giving 
precept  after  precept,  line  upon  line,  here  a  little  and 
there  a  little.  He  followed  this  course  that  each  pre- 
cept, as  He  gave  it,  might  be  understood,  and  lay  a 
moral  responsibility  on  those  who  received  it  (verse 
13) ;  and  if  our  study  foUows  close  in  the  lines  of  the 
divine  teaching,  we  too,  receiving  the  Word  like  little 
children,  shall  be  in  the  right  way  to  understand  it  in 
aU  its  progress,  and  in  all  the  manifold  richness  of  its 
meaning.  But  to  do  so,  I  again  repeat,  we  must  put 
ourselves  alongside  of  the  first   hearers.      What  was 


22  PROTESTANT  AND  CRITICAL         lect.  i. 

clear  and  plain  enougli  to  the  obedient  heart  then  is 
not  necessarily  clear  and  plain  to  us  now,  if  we  re- 
ceive it  in  a  difiPerent  attitude.  God's  Word  was  de- 
livered in  the  language  of  men,  and  is  not  exempt 
from  the  necessary  laws  and  limitations  of  human 
speech.  Now  it  is  a  law  of  all  speech,  and  especi- 
ally of  all  speech  upon  personal  matters,  that  the 
speaker  expresses  himself  to  the  understanding  of  his 
hearer,  presupposing  in  him  a  certain  preparation,  a 
certain  mental  attitude,  a  certain  degree  of  familiarity 
with  and  interest  in  the  subject.  When  a  third  person 
strikes  into  a  conversation,  he  cannot  follow  it  unless,  as 
the  familiar  phrase  has  it,  he  knows  where  they  are. 
So  it  is  with  the  Bible.  And  here  historical  study 
comes  in.  The  mind  of  God  is  unchangeable.  His 
purpose  of  love  is  invariable  from  first  to  last.  The 
manifold  variety  of  Scripture,  the  changing  aspects  of 
Bible  truth,  depend  on  no  change  in  Him,  but  wholly 
on  the  varying  circumstances  and  needs  of  the  men 
who  received  the  Eevelation.  It  is  with  their  life  and 
feelings  that  we  must  get  into  sympathy,  in  order  to 
understand  what  God  spoke  to  them.  We  must  read 
the  Bible  as  the  record  of  the  history  of  grace,  and  as 
itself  a  part  of  the  history.  And  this  we  must  do  with 
all  patience,  not  weary  though  om-  studies  do  not  at 
each  moment  yield  an  immediate  fruit  of  practical 
edification,  if  only  they  conduct  us  on  the  sure  road  to 
edification  by  carrying  us  along  the  actual  path  trodden 
by  God's  people  of  old ;  and,  opening  to  us  their  needs, 


LECT.  I.  METHODS  IDENTICAL.  23 


their  hopes,  their  trials,  even  their  errors  and  sins, 
enable  our  ears  to  receive  the  same  voice  which  they 
heard  behind  them,  saying,  "  This  is  the  way ;  walk  ye 
in  it "  (Isa.  xxx.  21).  It  is  the  glory  of  the  Bible  that 
it  invites  and  satisfies  such  study, — that  its  manifold 
contents,  the  vast  variety  of  its  topics,  the  extraordi- 
nary diversities  of  its  structure  and  style,  constitute  an 
inexhaustible  mine  of  the  richest  historical  interest,  in 
which  generation  after  generation  can  labour,  always 
bringing  forth  some  new  thing,  and  with  each  new 
discovery  coming  closer  to  a  full  understanding  of  the 
supreme  wisdom  and  love  of  Him  who  speaks  in  all 
Scripture. 

And  now  let  us  come  to  the  point.  In  sketching 
the  principles  and  aims  of  a  truly  Protestant  study  of 
Scripture  I  have  not  used  the  word  criticism,  but  I 
have  been  describing  the  thing.  Historical  criticism 
may  be  defined  without  special  reference  to  the  Bible, 
for  it  is  applicalDle,  and  is  daily  applied  without  dispute, 
to  every  ancient  literature  and  every  ancient  history. 
The  critical  study  of  ancient  documents  means  nothing 
else  than  the  careful  sifting  of  their  origin  and  meaning 
in  the  light  of  history.  The  first  principle  of  criticism 
is  that  every  book  bears  the  stamp  of  the  time  and 
circumstances  in  which  it  was  produced.  An  ancient 
book  is,  so  to  speak,  a  fragment  of  ancient  life ;  and  to 
understand  it  aright  we  must  treat  it  as  a  living  thins, 
as  a  bit  of  the  life  of  the  author  and  his  time,  which  we 
shall  not  fully  understand  without  putting  ourselves 


24  THE  OBJECTS  lect.  i. 


back  into  the  age  in  which  it  was  written.  People 
talk  of  destructive  criticism  as  if  the  critic's  one  delight 
were  to  prove  that  things  which  men  have  long  believed 
are  not  true,  and  that  books  were  not  written  by  the 
authors  whose  names  they  bear.  But  the  true  critic 
has  for  his  business,  not  to  destroy,  but  to  build  up. 
The  critic  is  an  interpreter,  but  one  who  has  a  larger 
view  of  his  task  than  the  man  of  mere  grammars  and 
dictionaries, — one  who  is  not  content  to  reproduce  the 
words  of  his  author,  but  strives  to  enter  into  sympathy 
with  his  thoughts,  and  to  understand  the  thoughts  as 
part  of  the  life  of  the  thinker  and  of  his  time.  In 
this  process  the  occasional  destruction  of  some  tradi- 
tional opinion  is  a  mere  incident. 

Ancient  books  coming  down  to  us  from  a  period 
many  centuries  before  the  invention  of  printing  have 
necessarily  undergone  many  vicissitudes.  Some  of  them 
are  preserved  only  in  imperfect  copies  made  by  some 
ignorant  scribe  of  the  dark  ages.  Others  have  been 
disfigured  by  editors,  who  mixed  up  foreign  matter  with 
the  original  text.  Very  often  an  important  book  fell 
altogether  out  of  sight  for  a  long  time,  and  when  it 
came  to  light  again  all  knowledge  of  its  origin  was 
gone ;  for  old  books  did  not  generally  have  title-pages 
and  prefaces.  They  often  lay  in  libraries  with  no  note 
of  the  author's  name  save  some  words  on  a  slip  or 
tablet  easily  detached.  And  when  such  a  roll  was 
again  brought  into  notice,  with  its  title  gone,  some  half- 
informed  reader  or  copyist  was  very  likely  to  give  it  a 


OF  CRITICISM.  25 


new  title  of  his  own  devising,  which  was  handed  down 
thereafter  as  if  it  had  been  original.  Or  again,  the  true 
meaning  and  purpose  of  a  book  often  became  obscure  in 
the  lapse  of  centuries,  and  led  to  false  interpretations. 
Once  more,  antiquity  has  handed  down  to  us  many 
writings  which  are  sheer  forgeries,  like  some  of  the 
Apocryphal  books,  or  the  Sibylline  oracles,  or  the  famous 
Epistles  of  Phalaris,  which  formed  the  subject  of  Bent- 
ley's  great  critical  essay.  In  all  such  cases  the  his- 
torical critic  must  destroy  the  received  view,  in  order  to 
establish  a  true  one.  He  must  review  doubtful  titles, 
purge  out  interpolations,  expose  forgeries ;  but  he  does 
so  only  to  manifest  the  truth,  and  put  the  genuine 
remains  of  antiquity  on  their  true  footing.  A  book  that 
is  really  old  and  reaUy  valuable  has  notliing  to  fear  from 
the  critic,  whose  labours  can  only  put  its  worth  in  a 
clearer  light,  and  estabKsh  its  authority  on  a  surer  basis. 

In  a  word,  it  is  the  business  of  the  critic  to  trace 
back  the  steps  by  which  any  ancient  book  has  been 
transmitted  to  us,  to  find  where  it  came  from  and  who 
wrote  it,  to  examine  the  occasion  of  its  composition,  and 
search  out  every  link  that  connects  it  with  the  history  of 
the  ancient  world  and  with  the  personal  life  of  the  author. 

Now  this  is  just  what  Protestant  principles  direct 
us  to  do  with  the  several  parts  of  the  Bible.  We  have 
got  to  go  back  step  by  step,  and  retrace  the  history  of 
the  sacred  volume  up  to  the  first  origin  of  each  separate 
writing  which  it  contains.  In  doing  this  we  must  use 
every  light  that  can  be  brought  to  bear  on  the  subject. 


26  THE  METHOD  OF  lect.  i. 

Every  fact  is  welcome,  whether  it  come  from  Jewish 
tradition,  or  from  a  comparison  of  old  MSS.  and  versions, 
or  from  an  examination  of  the  several  books  with  one 
another  and  of  each  book  in  its  own  inner  structure. 
It  is  not  needful  in  starting  to  lay  down  any  fixed  rules 
of  procedure.  The  ordinary  laws  of  evidence  and  good 
sense  must  be  our  guides.  And  these  we  must  apply  to 
the  Bible  just  as  we  should  do  to  any  other  ancient 
book.  That  is  the  only  principle  we  have  to  lay  down. 
And  it  is  plainly  a  just  principle.  For  the  transmission 
of  the  Bible  is  not  due  to  a  continued  miracle,  but  to  a 
watchful  Providence  ruling  the  ordinary  means  by  which 
ancient  books  have  all  been  handed  down.  And  finally, 
when  we  have  worked  our  way  back  through  the  long 
centuries  which  separate  us  from  the  age  of  Eevelation, 
we  must,  as  we  have  already  seen,  study  each  writing 
and  make  it  speak  for  itself  on  the  common  principles 
of  sound  exegesis.  We  must  not  be  afraid  of  the 
human  side  of  Scripture.  It  is  from  that  side  alone 
that  scholarship  can  get  at  any  Biblical  question.  The 
common  rules  of  interpretation  tell  us  to  read  the  book 
as  nearly  as  we  can  from  the  standpoint  of  the  author, 
and  always  to  keep  our  eye  fixed  on  his  historical  posi- 
tion, realising  the  fact  that  he  wrote  out  of  the  experi- 
ence of  his  own  life  and  from  the  standpoint  of  his  own 
time.  And  this,  as  has  been  shown,  is  the  very  rule 
which  Protestant  principles  conduct  us  to.  In  this 
department  of  intellectual  life  science  and  faith  have 
joined  hands.      There  is  no   discordance  between  the 


LECT.  I.  BIBLICAL  CRITICISM,  -27 


religious  and  the  scholarly  methods  of  study.  They 
lead  to  the  same  goal;  and  the  more  closely  our 
study  fulfils  the  demands  of  historical  scholarship, 
the  more  fully  will  it  correspond  with  our  religious 
needs. 

Now  I  know  what  is  said  in  answer  to  all  this. 
We  have  no  objection,  say  the  opponents  of  Biblical 
criticism,  to  any  amount  of  historical  study,  but  it  is 
not  legitimate  historical  study  that  has  produced  the 
current  results  of  Biblical  criticism.  These  results, 
say  they,  are  based  on  the  rationalistic  assumption  that 
the  supernatural  is  impossible,  and  that  everything  in 
the  Bible  which  asserts  the  existence  of  a  real  personal 
communication  of  God  with  man  is  necessarily  untrue. 
My  answer  to  this  objection  is  very  simple.  We  have 
not  got  to  results  yet ;  I  am  only  laying  down  a  method, 
and  a  method,  as  we  have  seen,  which  is  in  full  accord- 
ance with,  and  imperatively  prescribed  by,  the  Eeforma- 
tion  doctrine  of  the  Word  of  God.  We  are  agreed,  it 
appears,  that  the  method  is  a  true  one.  Let  us  go  on 
and  apply  it ;  and  if  in  the  application  you  find  me  call- 
ing in  a  rationalistic  principle,  if  you  can  show  at  any 
step  in  my  argument  that  I  assume  the  impossibility 
of  the  supernatural,  or  reject  plain  facts  in  the  inte- 
rests of  rationalistic  theories,  I  will  frankly  confess 
that  I  am  in  the  wrong.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  you 
must  remember  that  all  truth  is  one,  that  God  who 
gave  us  the  Bible  has  also  given  us  faculties  of  reason 
and  gifts  of  scholarship  with  which  to  study  the  Bible,  and 


28  THE  METHOD  OF  lect.  i. 

that  the  true  meaning  of  Scripture  is  not  to  be  measured 
by  preconceived  notions,  but  determined  as  the  result 
of  legitimate  research.  Only  of  this  I  am  sure  at  the 
outset,  that  the  Bible  does  speak  to  the  heart  of  man  in 
words  that  can  only  come  from  God — that  no  historical 
research  can  deprive  me  of  this  conviction^  or  make  less 
precious  the  divine  utterances  that  speak  straight  to 
the  heart.  For  the  language  of  these  words  is  so  clear 
that  no  readjustment  of  their  historical  setting  can  con- 
ceivably change  the  substance  of  them.  Historical 
study  may  throw  a  new  light  on  the  circumstances  in 
which  they  were  first  heard  or  written.  In  that  there 
can  only  be  gain.  But  the  plain,  central,  heartfelt 
truths  that  speak  for  themselves  and  rest  on  their  own 
indefeasible  worth  will  assuredly  remain  to  us.  No 
amount  of  change  in  the  background  of  a  picture  can 
make  white  black  or  black  white,  though  by  restoring 
the  right  background  where  it  has  been  destroyed  the 
harmony  and  balance  of  the  whole  composition  may  be 
immeasurably  improved. 

So  it  is  with  the  Bible.  The  supreme  truths  which 
speak  to  every  believing  heart,  the  way  of  salvation 
which  is  the  same  in  all  ages,  the  clear  voice  of  God's 
love  so  tender  and  personal  and  simple  that  a  cliild  can 
understand  it — these  are  thini^s  which  must  abide  with 
us,  and  prove  themselves  mighty  from  age  to  age  apart 
from  all  scientific  study.  But  those  who  love  the  truth 
will  not  shrink  from  any  toil  that  can  help  us  to  a 
fuller  insight  into  all  its  details  and  all  its  setting ;  and 


LECT.  I.  BIBLICAL  CRITICISM.  29 

those  whose  faith  is  firmly  fixed  on  the  things  that 
cannot  be  moved  will  not  doubt  that  every  new  pro- 
gress in  Biblical  study  must  in  the  end  make  God's 
great  scheme  of  grace  appear  in  fuller  beauty  and 
glory. 


30  PROTESTANT  VERSIONS  lect.  ii. 


LECTUEE  II. 

CHRISTIAN  INTERPRETATION  AND  JEWISH  TRADITION. 

At  our  last  meeting,  I  endeavoured  to  convey  to  you  a 
general  conception  of  the  methods  and  objects  of  Bibli- 
cal criticism,  and  to  show  that  the  very  same  rules  for 
the  prosecution  of  this  branch  of  Biblical  study  may  be 
derived  independently  from  the  general  principles  of 
historical  science  and  from  the  theological  principles 
of  the  Protestant  Keformation.  We  ended  by  seeing 
that  it  was  the  duty  of  criticism  to  start  with  the  Bible 
as  it  has  been  delivered  to  us,  and  as  it  now  is  in  our 
hands,  and  to  endeavour  to  trace  back  the  history  of  its 
transmission,  and  of  the  vicissitudes  through  which  it 
has  passed,  up  to  the  time  of  the  original  authors,  so 
that  we  may  be  able  to  take  an  historical  view  of  the 
ori<?in  of  each  individual  writino-  of  the  Old  Testament, 
and  of  the  meaning  which  it  had  to  those  who  first 
received  it  and  to  him  who  first  wrote  it. 

For  this  purpose,  in  speaking  to  a  general  audience, 
it  is  necessary  for  me  to  begin  with  the  English  Bible. 
The  English  Bible  which  we  are  accustomed  to  use 
gives  us  the  Old  Testament  as  it  was  understood  by 


LECT.  II.  OF  THE  BIBLE,  31 

Protestant  scholars  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  It  is  not  necessary  for  our  present  purpose 
that  I  should  dwell  upon  the  minor  differences  which 
separate  the  Authorised  Version  from  other  English 
versions  made  about  the  same  period  or  a  Httle  earlier. 
Some  of  these,  particularly  the  Geneva  Bible,  are  per- 
haps in  certain  respects  preferable,  while  in  others  they 
are  certainly  inferior,  to  the  translation  of  1611.  Speak- 
ing broadly,  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  Authorised 
Version  represents  in  a  very  admirable  manner  the  un- 
derstanding of  the  Old  Testament  which  had  been 
attained  by  Protestant  scholarship  at  the  beginning  of 
the  seventeenth  century.  We  are  now  to  look  back 
and  inquire  what  are  the  links  connecting  that  Eng- 
lish version  of  ours  with  the  original  autographs  of  the 
sacred  writers. 

The  Protestant  versions,  of  which  our  Bible  is  one, 
were  products  of  the  Eeformation.  To  a  certain  extent 
they  were  products  of  the  controversy  with  the  Church 
of  Eome.  In  other  words,  there  were  at  that  time  two 
main  views  current  in  Europe,  and  among  the  scholars 
of  Europe,  as  to  the  proper  way  of  dealing  with  the 
Bible — as  to  the  canon  of  Scripture,  the  authentic  text, 
and  the  method  of  interpretation.  We  have  to  consider 
the  differences  that  separated  Protestant  and  Catholic 
exegesis.  The  Catholic  exegesis,  with  which  the  Pro- 
testants had  to  contend,  was  the  natural  descendant  of 
the  exegesis  of  the  Old  Catholic  Church,  as  it  was  formed 
in  opposition  to  the  heretics,  as  far  back  in  part  as  the 


32  EXEGESIS  OF  THE  lect.  ii. 

second  century  after  Christ.  At  the  time  of  Luther,  as 
we  have  already  seen,  there  was  no  dispute  between 
Protestants  and  Catholics  as  to  the  authority  of  Scrip- 
ture ;  both  parties  admitted  the  supreme  authority,  but 
they  were  divided  on  the  question  of  the  true  meaning, 
of  Scripture.  According  to  the  Old  Church,  on  which 
the  Catholic  party  rested,  the  Bible  was  not  clear  and 
intelligible  by  its  own  light  like  an  ordinary  book.  It 
was  taken  for  granted  that  the  use  of  the  Bible  lies  in 
those  doctrines  higher  than  reason,  those  noetic  truths, 
as  they  were  called,  of  a  divine  philosophy,  which  it 
contains.  But  the  earliest  fathers  of  the  Catholic 
Church  already  saw  quite  clearly  that  those  supposed 
abstract  and  noetic  truths  did  not  lie  on  the  surface  of 
Scripture.  To  an  ordinary  reader  the  Bible  appears 
something  quite  different  from  a  body  of  supernatural 
mysteries  and  abstract  pliilosophic  doctrines.  This  ob- 
servation was  made  by  the  earliest  fathers,  but  it  did 
not  lead  them,  nor  did  it  lead  the  Gnostic  heretics,  with 
whom  they  were  engaged  in  controversy,  to  anticipate 
the  great  discovery  of  the  Eeformation,  and  to  see  that 
the  real  meaning  of  the  Bible  must  just  be  its  natural 
meaning.  The  fathers  of  the  Church  were  not  led  to  see 
in  the  Bible  nothing  more  than  it  really  contains — 
nothing  more  than  a  living,  perspicuous  message  of 
divine  truth.  On  the  contrary,  the  orthodox  and  the 
Gnostics  alike  continued  to  look  in  the  Bible  for  mys- 
teries concealed  under  the  plain  text  of  Scripture — 
mysteries  which  could  only  be  reached  by  some  form  of 


LECT.  II.  OLD  CATHOLIC  CHURCH.  33 

allegorical  interpretation.  Of  course,  the  allegorical 
exegesis  yielded  to  every  party  exactly  those  principles 
which  that  party  desired.  The  orthodox  found  in  the 
Bible  the  orthodox  system  of  truth,  the  heretics  found 
in  it  their  own  peculiar  views ;  and  so  the  controversy 
between  the  Gnostics  and  the  Catholic  Church  could 
not  be  decided  on  the  ground  of  the  Bible  alone,  which 
both  sides  interpreted  in  an  equally  arbitrary  manner. 
To  tell  the  truth,  it  would  have  been  very  difficult  in- 
deed for  Christian  theologians  in  those  days  to  reach  a 
sound  and  satisfactory  exegesis,  conducted  upon  prin- 
ciples which  we  could  now  accept.  Very  few  of  the 
theologians  in  the  churches  of  the  Gentiles  possessed  the 
linguistic  knowledge  necessary  to  understand  the  ori- 
ginal text.  Hebrew  scholars  were  few  and  far  between, 
and  the  Doctors  of  the  Church  were  habitually  de- 
pendent upon  the  Alexandrian  Greek  translation,  called 
the  Septuagint  or  Version  of  the  Seventy.  To  this  trans- 
lation w^e  shall  have  to  advert  at  greater  length  by- 
and-by.  At  present  it  is  enough  to  say  that  it  was  a 
version  composed  in  Egypt  and  current  among  the 
Jews  of  Alexandria  a  considerable  time  before  the 
Christian  era,  and  that  it  spread  contemporaneously  with 
the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  through  all  parts  of  Christen- 
dom where  Greek  was  understood.  In  many  parts  of 
the  Old  Testament,  this  translation  was  very  obscure, 
and  really  did  not  yield  to  a  natural  method  of  exegesis 
any  clear  sense.  But  indeed,  apart  from  the  disadvan- 
tage of  being  thrown  back  upon  the  Septuagint,  the 


34  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL  lect  ii. 

Christians  could  not  have  hoped  to  understand  the  Old 
Testament  better  than  their  Jewish  contemporaries. 
Even  if  they  had  set  themselves  to  study  the  original 
text,  they  would  have  required  to  take  their  whole 
knowledge  of  the  Hebrew  Bible  from  the  Jews,  who 
were  the  only  masters  that  could  then  have  instructed 
them  in  the  language  ;  and  in  fact,  while  the  Western 
churches  were  mainly  dependent  on  the  Septuagint,  and 
struck  out  an  independent  line  of  interpretation  on  the 
basis  of  that  version,  the  exegesis  of  the  Oriental 
churches  continued  to  be  largely  guided  by  the  teach- 
ing of  the  Synagogue.  In  Syria  and  beyond  the  river 
Euphrates,  the  Bible  was  interpreted  by  Christian 
scholars  who  spoke  Syriac — a  language  akin  to  Hebrew 
— upon  the  methods  of  the  Jewish  schools ;  but  by  this 
time  the  Jews  themselves  had  fallen  into  an  abyss  of 
artificial  Eabbinical  interpretation,  from  which  no  true 
light  could  be  derived  for  the  understanding  of  Scrip- 
ture. The  influence  of  the  Jewish  interpretation 
which  ruled  in  the  East  can  be  traced,  not  only  in  the 
old  Syriac  translation  called  the  Peshito,  but  in  the 
writings  of  later  Syriac  divines.  In  the  Homilies  of 
Aphraates,  for  example,  which  belong  to  the  fourth 
century,  we  find  clear  evidence  that  the  Biblical  training 
and  exegetical  methods  of  the  author,  who,  Hving  in  the 
far  East,  was  not  a  Greek  scholar,  were  largely  derived 
from  the  Jewish  doctors ;  and  the  operation  of  the  same 
influences  can  be  followed  far  down  into  the  Middle 
Aires.  ^^^ 


LECT.  II.  CANON,  35 

Accordingly,  in  the  absence  of  a  satisfactory  and 
scientific  interpretation,  the  conflict  of  opinions  between 
the  orthodox  and  the  heretics  was  decided  on  another 
principle  than  that  of  exegesis.  The  apostles,  it  was 
said,  had  received  the  mysteries  of  divine  truth  from 
our  Lord,  and  had  committed  them  in  plain  and  living 
words  to  the  apostolic  churches.  That  is  a  point  to 
which  the  ancient  fathers  always  recurred.  The  written 
word,  they  say,  is  necessarily  ambiguous  and  difficult, 
but  the  spoken  word  of  the  apostles  was  clear  and 
transparent.  In  the  apostolic  churches,  then,  the  sum 
of  true  doctrine  has  been  handed  down  in  an  accurate 
form ;  and  the  consent  of  the  apostolic  churches  as  to  the 
mysteries  of  faith  forms  the  rule  of  sound  exegesis.  Any 
interpretation  of  Scripture,  say  the  fathers,  is  necessarily 
false  if  it  differs  from  the  ecclesiastical  canon — that  was 
the  technical  term  which  they  used — if  it  differs,  that 
is,  from  the  received  doctrinal  testimony  of  the  great 
apostolic  churches,  such  as  Corinth,  Eome,  and  Alexan- 
dria, in  which  the  word  of  the  apostles  was  still  held  to 
live  handed  down  by  oral  tradition. ^^^ 

These  were  the  principles  of  exegesis  to  w^hich  the 
Catholic  Church  adhered  up  to  the  time  of  the  Eefor- 
mation.  iN'ew  elements  were  added  from  time  to  time 
to  the  body  of  ecclesiastical  tradition,  and  in  particular 
a  very  great  change  took  place  with  regard  to  the  re- 
ceived edition  of  the  Old  Testament.  When  the  theory 
of  the  ecclesiastical  canon  was  first  formed,  the  churches 
of  Europe  read  either  the  Greek  translation  of  the  Sep- 


36  THE  VULGATE. 


tuagint  or  Latin  versions  formed  from  the  Septuagint ; 
but  about  the  year  400  a.d.,  Jerome,  a  Hebrew  scholar, 
and  a  very  remarkable  scholar  indeed  for  that  age,  formed 
a  new  translation  under  the  direct  influence  of  Jewish 
tradition.  His  Hebrew  learning  he  derived  from  the 
Jews,  and  resting  on  their  teaching  he  made  a  new 
version  direct  from  the  Hebrew,  which  was  greatly 
assailed  at  the  time  as  a  dangerous  innovation,  but 
which  by-and-by  came  to  be  accepted  in  the  Latin 
churches  as  the  authentic  and  received  edition  of  the 
Bible.  When  I  say  that  Jerome's  version  was  received 
by  the  Western  churches,  it  is  proper  to  observe  that  it 
was  not  received  in  all  its  purity,  and  that  this  Vulgate 
or  received  version  (the  word  vulgate  means  "  currently 
received"),  as  it  actually  existed  in  the  Middle  Ages 
and  at  the  time  of  the  Eeformation,  was  not  the  pure 
text  of  Jerome,  but  was  Jerome's  version  considerably 
modified  by  things  which  had  been  carried  over  from 
the  older  Latin  translations  taken  from  the  Greek.  Still, 
the  Catholic  Church  supposed  itself  to  receive  the  ver- 
sion of  Jerome  as  the  authoritative  and  vulgate  version, 
and  this  new  Vulgate  replaced  the  old  Vulgate,  the 
Greek  Septuagint  translation  made  by  the  Jews  in 
Egypt  before  the  time  of  Christ. 

Now  the  Eeformers,  who  were  well  read  in  church 
history,  sometimes  met  their  opponents  by  pointing  out 
that  the  ecclesiastical  tradition  on  which  the  Catholics 
relied  as  the  proper  norm  or  rule  of  interpretation  had 
itself  undergone  chan^sje  in  the  course  of  centuries,  and 


LECT.  II.  THE  DECREES  OF  TRENT.  37 

they  often  appealed  with  success  to  the  earliest  fathers 
against  those  views  of  truth  which  were  current  in  their 
own  times.  But  Luther's  fundamental  conception  of 
revelation  made  it  impossible  for  the  Protestants  to 
submit  their  understanding  of  the  Bible  even  to  the 
earliest  and  purest  form  of  the  ecclesiastical  canon.  The 
ecclesiastical  canon — the  rule  of  interpreting  everything 
according  to  the  consent  of  the  apostolic  churches — had, 
as  we  have  seen,  been  first  invented  in  order  to  get  over 
the  ambiguities  of  the  allegorical  method  of  interpreta- 
tion. When  Luther  taught  the  people  that  the  Bible 
can  be  understood  like  any  other  book,  that  the  true 
meaning  of  its  w^ords  is  the  natural  sense  which  appeals 
to  ordinary  Christian  intelligence,  it  was  plain  that  for 
him  this  whole  method  of  ecclesiastical  tradition  as 
the  rule  of  exegesis  no  longer  had  any  meaning  or 
value. 

The  Church  of  Eome,  after  the  Eeformation  arose, 
took  up  a  definite  and  formal  battle-ground  against  Pro- 
testantism in  the  Decrees  of  the  Council  of  Trent.  The 
positions  laid  down  by  the  Doctors  of  Trent  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  movement  headed  by  Luther  were  these : — 

I.  The  supreme  rule  of  faith  and  life  is  contained  in 
the  written  books  and  the  unwritten  traditions  of  Christ 
and  his  Apostles  dictated  by  the  Holy  Spirit  and  handed 
down  by  continual  succession  in  the  Catholic  Church. 
That  was  the  way  in  which  they  expressed  the  authority 
of  ecclesiastical  tradition. 

II.  The  canonical  books  are  those  books  in  all  their 

3 


38  THE  AUTHORITY  OF  lect.  ii. 

parts  wliicli  are  read  in  the  Catholic  Church  and  con- 
tained in  the  Latin  Yulgate  version,  the  authenticity  of 
which  is  accepted  as  sufficiently  proved  by  its  long  use 
in  the  Catholic  Church. 

III.  The  interpretation  of  Scripture  must  be  con- 
formed to  the  tenets  of  Holy  Mother  Church  and  the 
unanimous  consent  of  the  Fathers. 

The  Keformers  traversed  all  these  three  positions; 
for,  firstly,  as  we  have  seen,  they  denied  the  validity  of 
unwritten  tradition;  secondly,  they  refused  to  admit 
the  authority  of  the  Vulgate,  and  appealed  to  the  original 
text ;  thirdly,  they  denied  the  existence  and  still  more 
the  authority  of  the  consent  of  the  Fathers,  and  admitted 
no  principle  for  the  interpretation  of  the  Bible  that  would 
not  be  sound  if  applied  to  another  book.  They  affirmed 
that  the  reader  has  a  right  to  form  his  own  private  judg- 
ment on  the  sense  of  Scripture ;  by  which,  of  course, 
they  did  not  mean  that  one  man's  judgment  is  as  good 
as  another's.  They  meant  no  more  than  that  the  sense 
of  a  controverted  passage  must  be  decided  by  argument 
and  not  by  authority.  The  only  rule  of  exposition 
which  they  laid  down  as  possessing  any  authority  for 
the  Church  was  this, — that  in  a  disputed  point  of  doc- 
trine the  sense  of  an  obscure  passage  must  be  ruled  by 
passages  which  are  more  plain.  And  that,  as  you  will 
easily  observe,  is,  strictly  speaking,  not  a  rule  of  inter- 
pretation but  a  principle  of  theology.  It  rather  tells  us 
which  passage  we  are  to  choose  for  the  proof  or  dis- 
j)roof  of  any  doctrine  than  helps  us  to  get  the  exact 


LECT.  ir.  THE  VULGATE  VERSION.  39 

sense  of  a  disputed  text.  All  that  it  really  means  is 
this — "  Form  your  doctrines  from  plain  texts,  and  do 
not  be  led  astray  from  the  teacliing  of  plain  passages 
by  a  meaning  which  some  one  may  extort  from  an 
obscure  one."  So  far  as  the  principle  is  exegetical,  it 
simply  means  that  an  all-wise  Author  cannot  contradict 
Himself. 

I  do  not  require  to  say  more  upon  the  first  and  third 
positions  of  the  Council  of  Trent ;  but  the  second  posi- 
tion, as  to  the  claims  of  the  standard  Vulgate  edition, 
is  a  point  which  requires  more  attention.  In  making  the 
Vujgate  the  standard  edition,  the  Council  of  Trent  implied 
two  things  : — (1)  that  the  Vulgate  contains  all  the  ca- 
nonical books,  and  none  other,  and  that  it  presents  these 
books  in  their  true  text ;  and  (2)  that  the  translation,  if 
not  perfect,  is  exempt  from  errors  affecting  doctrine.  The 
Eoman  Catholics,  of  course,  did  not  mean  to  assert  that 
the  Vulgate  edition  did  in  every  particular  represent  the 
exact  text  and  meaning  of  the  original  writers.  In  justice 
to  them,  we  must  say  that  for  their  contention  that  was 
not  necessary,  because  all  along  what  they  wished  to  get 
at  was  not  the  meaning  of  the  original  writers,  but  the 
body  of  doctrine  which  had  the  seal  of  the  authority  of 
the  Church ;  and  therefore,  from  their  point  of  view,  the 
authenticity  of  the  text  of  the  Vulgate  was  sufficiently 
proved  by  the  fact  that  the  infallible  Church  had  long 
used  that  text  without  finding  any  ground  of  complaint 
against  it;  and  the  authority  of  the  translation,  in  like 
manner,  was  sufficiently  supported  by  the  fact  that  theo- 


40  JEROME  AND  lect.  ii. 

logians  had  always  been  able  to  deduce  from  it  the  re- 
ceived doctrines  of  the  Church.  That,  no  doubt,  was  what 
they  meant.  Nevertheless,  the  two  theses  that  they  laid 
down  were  very  curiously  at  variance  with  what  Jerome, 
the  author  of  the  Vulgate  version,  had  once  and  again  said 
about  the  value  of  his  own  labours.  They  affirmed  that 
the  Vulgate  contained  all  the  canonical  books  and  none 
else,  and  that  it  contained  those  books  in  the  true  text. 
Jerome,  on  the  contrary,  in  that  prologue  to  part  of  his 
translation  which  is  generally  called  the  Prologus  Galea- 
/2(s,  regards  all  books  as  apocryphal  which  he  did  not  trans- 
late directly  from  the  Hebrew;  and,  following  this  rule,  he 
excludes  from  the  canon  the  Book  of  Wisdom,  Ecclesi- 
asticus,  Judith,  Tobit,  Baruch,  and  also  the  two  books  of 
the  Maccabees,  although  he  had  seen  the  first  of  these  in 
Hebrew.  The  Council  of  Trent  accepts  all  these  books 
as  canonical,  and  not  only  these  books,  but  various 
additions  to  other  books — to  Ezra,  Daniel,  and  Esther 
— which  are  not  found  in  the  Hebrew  text.^-^ 

The  second  position  of  the  doctors  of  Trent  also 
reads  curiously  in  the  light  of  Jerome's  own  remarks. 
Accordincj  to  the  Council  of  Trent,  the  whole  translation 
of  Jerome  is  accurate  for  all  purposes  of  doctrine,  but 
Jerome  in  his  prefaces  makes  a  very  different  claim  for 
his  version.  What  he  says  is  this  :  "  If  you  observe  my 
version  to  vary  from  the  Greek  or  Latin  copies  in  your 
hands,  ask  the  most  trustworthy  Jew  you  can  find,  and 
see  if  he  does  not  agree  with  me."  ^"^^  Once  and  again 
Jerome  claims  this,  and  only  this,  for  his  version,  that 


LECT.  II.  HIS  TEACHERS.  41 

it  agrees  with  the  best  Jewish  tradition;  in  other  words, 
Jerome  sought  in  his  version  to  correct  the  current 
Bibles  of  his  day  according  to  the  Hebrew  text,  as  the 
Jews  of  his  time  received  it,  and  to  give  an  interpreta- 
tion on  a  level  with  the  best  Jewish  scholarship.  He 
did  this  partly  by  the  aid  of  earlier  translations  from 
the  Hebrew  into  the  Greek  (Aquila,  Theodotion,  but 
especially  Symmachus)  made  after  the  time  of  Christ,  and 
more  in  accordance  than  the  Septuagint  with  the  later 
Rabbinical  scholarship  ;^^^  and  partly  by  the  help  of 
learned  Jews.  On  one  occasion,  he  tells  us,  he  brought  a 
famous  Rabbi  from  Tiberias  to  instruct  him.  At  another 
time  he  brought  a  Jewish  scholar  from  Lydda;  and  in 
particular  he  speaks  of  one  called  Bar  Anina,  a  teacher 
who  came  to  him  by  night  for  fear  of  his  co-religion- 
ists, while  the  translator  resided  in  Jerusalem  and  Beth- 
lehem. ^'^ 

Kow,  in  their  argument  with  the  Roman  Catholics, 
the  Protestants  simply  fell  back  upon  these  facts.  They 
quoted  Jerome  against  the  Council  of  Trent,  as  is  done, 
for  example,  in  the  sixth  of  the  Articles  of  the  Church  of 
England. ^'^  They  quoted  Jerome,  and  therefore  adopted 
his  definition  that  all  books  which  wxre  not  extant  in 
Hebrew  and  admitted  to  the  canon  of  the  Jews  in  the 
day  of  Jerome  are  apociyphal  and  not  to  be  cited  in 
proof  of  a  disputed  doctrine.  I  ask  you  specially 
to  note  that  that  was  all  the  Protestants  in  their 
earlier  controversies  did.  They  simply  fell  back  upon 
Jerome.     They  said — "  You  find  that  great  doctor,  the 


42  CALVIN.  LECT.  II. 

most  learned  of  his  day,  and  other  Fathers  along  with 
him,  refusing  to  admit  as  canonical,  and  authoritative  for 
the  Church  as  proof  of  doctrine,  any  book  which  was 
not  part  of  the  Hebrew  canon  of  the  time."  Beyond 
that  they  did  not  care  to  press  the  question  of  the 
canon.  There  were  differences  among  themselves  as  to 
the  value  of  the  Apocrypha  on  the  one  hand,  and  as  to 
the  canonicity  of  Esther  and  some  other  books  of  the 
old  canon  upon  the  other.  But  it  was  enough  for  the 
Protestants  in  controversy  with  Eome  to  be  aljle  to 
refuse  a  proof  text  drawn  from  the  Apocryphal  books, 
upon  the  plain  ground  that  the  authority  of  these  books 
was  challenged  even  by  many  of  the  fathers.  Calvin,  in 
his  Antidote,  to  the  Council  of  Trent  is  willing  to  leave 
the  question  of  the  canon  open,  contenting  himself  with 
the  observation  that  the  intrinsic  qualities  of  the 
Apocryphal  books  display  a  manifest  inferiority  to  the 
canonical  writings.^^^  That,  I  say,  was  all  that  the  Pro- 
testants at  first  cared  to  lay  down  on  this  subject. 

On  the  question  of  the  true  interpretation  of  Scrip- 
ture they  had  much  more  to  say.  The  revival  of 
letters  in  the  fifteenth  century  had  raised  a  keen 
interest  in  ancient  languages,  and  scholars  who  had 
mastered  Greek  as  well  as  Latin  were  ambitious  to  add 
to  their  knowledge  a  third  learned  tongue,  viz.,  the 
Hebrew.  At  first  this  ambition  met  with  many  ditfi- 
culties.  The  original  text  of  the  Old  Testament  was 
preserved  only  among  the  scholars  of  the  Synagogue. 
It  was  impossible  to  learn  Hebrew  except  from  Jewish 


LECT.  II.  JOHN  REUCHLIN.  43 

teachers ;  and  orthodox  Jews  refused  to  teach  men  who 
were  not  of  their  own  faith.  Gradually,  however,  these 
obstacles  were  surmounted.  Towards  the  close  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  Hebrew  Bibles  began  to  be  printed, 
and  some  knowledge  of  the  Hebrew  tongue  became 
disseminated  to  a  considerable  extent ;  and  at  length,  in 
the  year  1506,  John  Eeuchlin,  the  great  supporter  of 
Hebrew  studies  north  of  the  Alps,  put  forth  in  Latin 
his  Rudiments  of  the  Hebrew  language.  This  Latin 
work,  which  was  something  of  the  nature  of  both  gram- 
mar and  dictionary,  was  almost  entirely  taken  from  the 
Hebrew  manuals  of  the  famous  Jewish  scholar  and 
lexicographer,  Eabbi  David  Kimhi,  who  flourished  about 
the  year  1200  A.D.  As  soon  as  Christians  were  furnished 
in  this  way  with  text-books,  the  new  learning  spread 
rapidly.  It  ran  over  Europe  just  at  the  time  when 
the  Eeformation  was  spreading,  and  the  Eeformers, 
always  keenly  alive  to  the  best  and  most  modern  learn- 
ing of  their  time,  read  the  Old  Testament  in  the  original 
Hebrew,  and  often  found  occasion  to  differ  from  Jerome's 
version.  Observe,  they  agreed  with  Jerome  in  principle. 
They,  like  him,  aimed  only  at  rendering  the  text  as  the 
best  Hebrew  scholars  would  do,  and  to  them,  as  to  him, 
the  standard  of  scholarship  was  that  of  the  most  learned 
Jews.  But  when  Jerome  wrote,  there  was  no  such 
thing  in  existence  as  a  Hebrew  grammar  and  dictionary ; 
there  were  no  written  commentaries  to  which  a  Christian 
scholar  had  access.  The  Eeformers  had  the  text-book 
of  Eeuchlin,  the  grammar  and  lexicon  of  Kimhi,  the 


44  THE  SCHOLARSHIP  OF  lect.  ii. 

commentaries  of  many  Eabbis  of  the  Middle  Ages,  with 
other  helps  denied  to  Jerome,  and  therefore  they  knew 
that  their  new  learning  put  them  in  a  position  to 
criticise  his  work.  Often,  indeed,  they  undervalued 
Jerome's  labours,  and  this  ultimately  led  to  contro- 
versies between  Protestants  and  Catholics,  which  were 
fruitful  of  instruction  to  both  sides.  But,  on  the  whole, 
the  Eeformers  were  right.  They  did  know  Hebrew 
better  than  Jerome,  and  their  versions,  including  our 
English  Bible,  approached  much  more  nearly  than 
his  to  the  ideal  common  to  both, — which  was  to  give 
the  sense  of  the  Old  Testament  as  it  was  understood 
by  the  best  Jewish  scholars.  Of  course,  the  Jewish 
authorities  themselves  sometimes  differed  from  one 
another.  In  such  cases,  the  Protestants  leant  some- 
times on  one  authority,  sometimes  on  another.  Luther 
takes  a  great  deal  from  a  commentator  who  has  been 
called  the  RosenmuUer  of  the  Jews  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
R.  Solomon  of  Troyes,  generally  called  Piashi,  who  died 
A.D.  1105.  Our  Bible  is  mainly  guided  by  the  grammar 
and  lexicon  of  the  later  scholar,  E.  David  Kimhi  of 
JSTarbonne,  who  has  already  been  mentioned  as  the 
author  of  the  most  current  text-books  of  the  Hebrew 
language.  But  the  point  which  I  wish  you  to  observe 
is  that  the  Eeformers  and  their  successors,  up  to  the 
time  when  all  our  Protestant  versions  w^ere  fixed,  were, 
for  all  purposes  of  learning,  in  the  hands  of  the  Eabbins. 
Upon  principle  they  stood  with  Jerome  against  the 
Council  of  Trent,  alike  as  to  the  question  of  the  canon 


LECT.  II.  THE  REFORMERS.  45 

and  as  to  the  question  of  interpretation.  Their  object 
in  the  sixteenth  century,  like  his  in  the  fourth,  was 
simply  to  give  to  the  \^gar  the  fruit  of  the  best  Jewish 
learning,  applied  to  the  translation  of  the  Scriptures  as 
they  were  received  among  the  Jews  from  the  time  of 
Jerome  downwards. 

It  may  be  asked  why  the  Reformers  stopped  here. 
But  the  answer  is  clear  enough.  They  stopped  at  that 
point  because  the  learning  of  their  time  also  stopped 
there.  They  went  as  far  as  the  scholarship  of  the  age 
would  carry  them.  Luther,  it  will  be  remembered,  first 
saw  the  practical  value  of  philological  study,  when  he 
was  puzzling  over  the  expression  pcenitentiam  agite, 
"do  penance,"  which  the  Vulgate  uses  for  the  Greek 
word  that  in  the  English  translation  is  rendered 
"  repent."  Was  it  possible,  he  said  to  himself,  that  Christ 
and  the  Apostles  could  really  bid  men  do  penance  ? 
Did  the  New  Testament  really  stand  on  the  side  of  his 
opponents,  and  of  all  the  gross  corruptions  which  the 
doctrine  of  penance  had  introduced  ?  Melanchthon  solved 
this  difficulty  by  showing  to  Luther  that  the  Greek 
word  fi€ravo€LT€,  which  Jerome  had  translated  "  do  pen- 
ance," really  and  etymologically  meant  "change  your 
mind."  From  that  moment  the  Reformation  entered 
into  a  conscious  alliance  with  the  new  learning,  to  which 
it  was  already  akin  in  its  independent  love  of  truth,  its 
rebellion  against  human  authority,  and  its  interest  in 
the  Bible  as  a  real  living  book.  Accordingly,  all  that 
early  Protestantism  did  for  the  Old  Testament,  beyond 


46  HEBREW  SCHOLARSHIP  lect.  ii. 

the  rejection  of  authoritative  traditional  interpreta- 
tions and  the  allegorical  sense,  was  to  read  it  by  the 
best  light  which  scholarship  then  offered.  All  sound 
Hebrew  scholarship  then  resided  with  the  Jewish 
doctors,  and  so  the  Protestant  scholars  became  their 
disciples. 

But  it  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that  the  men 
who  refused  to  accept  the  authority  of  Christian  tradi- 
tion as  to  the  number  of  books  in  the  canon,  the  best 
text  of  the  Old  Testament,  or  the  principles  upon  wdiich 
that  text  is  to  be  translated,  adopted  it  as  a  principle  of 
faith  that  the  Jewish  tradition,  the  unchristian  tradition, 
upon  all  these  points  is  final.  Luther  again  and  again 
showed  that  he  submitted  to  no  such  authority ;  and  if 
the  Eeformers  and  their  first  successors  did  practically 
accept  the  results  of  Jewish  scholarship  upon  all .  these 
questions,  they  did  so  merely  because  these  results  were 
in  accordance  with  the  best  light  then  attainable.  It 
was  left  for  a  later  generation,  which  had  lost  the  courage 
of  the  first  Eeformers  because  it  had  lost  much  of  their 
clear  insight  into  divine  things,  to  substitute  an  authori- 
tative Jewish  tradition  for  the  authoritative  tradition  of 
the  Catholic  Church — to  swear  by  the  Jewish  canon  and 
the  Massoretic  text  as  the  Eomanists  swore  by  the  Tri- 
dentine  canon  and  the  Yulgate  text.  The  Eeformers 
had  too  much  reverence  for  God's  AVord  to  subject  it  to 
the  bondage  of  any  tradition.  They  would  gladly  have 
accepted  any  further  light  of  learning,  carrying  them 
back   behind    the   time   of  Eabbinical   and   unbeliev- 


LECT.  II.  AMONG  THE  JEWS.  47 

ing  Judaism  to  the  first  ages  of  the  Old  Testament 
writings. 

Scholarsliip  moved  onwards,  and  as  research  was 
carried  farther  it  gradually  became  plain  that  it  was 
possible  for  Biblical  students,  with  the  material  still 
preserved  to  them,  to  get  behind  the  Jewish  Eabbins, 
upon  whom  our  translators  were  still  dependent,  and 
to  draw  from  the  sacred  stream  at  a  point  nearer  its 
source.  I  have  now  to  explain  how  this  was  seen  to 
be  possible. 

From  the  time  when  the  Old  Testament  was  written, 
down  to  the  sixteenth  century,  there  was  no  continuous 
tradition  of  sound  Hebrew  learning  except  among  the 
Jews.  The  little  that  Christians  knew  about  the  Old 
Testament  at  first  hand  had  always  come  from  the 
Eabbins.  Among  the  Jews,  on  the  contrary,  there  was 
a  continuous  scholarly  tradition.  The  knowledge  of 
Hebrew  and  the  most  received  ways  of  explaining  the 
Old  Testament  were  handed  down  from  generation  to 
generation  along  with  the  original  text.  I  ask  you  to 
understand  precisely  what  this  means.  Long  before  the 
time  of  Christ,  the  Jews  had  ceased  to  speak  Hebrew. 
In  the  New  Testament,  no  doubt,  we  read  once  and 
again  of  the  Hebrew  tongue  as  spoken  and  understood 
by  the  people  of  Palestine ;  but  the  language  which  is 
called  Hebrew  in  the  New  Testament  was  a  dialect  as 
unlike  to  the  Hebrew  of  the  Bible  as  German  is  to 
English — a  different  language,  although  a  kindred  one. 
This  language  is  called  Hebrew  because  it  was  spoken 


48  THE  METURGEMAN,  lect.  ii. 

by  the  Hebrews,  just  as  the  Spanish  Jews  in  Constan- 
tinople at  the  present  day  call  their  Spanish  jargon 
Hebrew.  It  was  a  kind  of  Syriac  or  Aramaic,  which 
the  Jews  had  gradually  learned  in  place  of  Hebrew, 
after  their  return  from  captivity,  when  they  found  them- 
selves a  small  handful  living  in  the  midst  of  nations 
who  spoke  Aramaic,  and  with  whom  they  had  constant 
dealings.  In  those  days  Aramaic  was  the  language  of 
business  «,nd  of  government,  just  as  English  is  in  the 
Highlands  of  Scotland,  and  so  the  Jews  forgot  their  own 
tongue,  and  learned  Aramaic,  as  the  Scottish  Celts 
are  now  forgetting  Gaelic  for  English.  This  process  had 
already  gone  on  to  a  great  extent  before  the  latest  books 
of  the  Old  Testament  were  completed.  Such  writers  as 
the  authors  of  Chronicles  and  Ecclesiastes  write  Hebrew 
in  a  way  which  shows  that  their  thoughts  often  ran  not 
in  Hebrew  but  in  Aramaic.  They  use  Aramaic  words 
and  idioms  which  would  have  puzzled  Moses  and  David, 
and  in  some  of  the  later  Old  Testament  books,  in  Ezra 
and  in  Daniel,  although  not  in  those  parts  of  the  former 
book  which  are  autobiographical  and  written  by  Ezra 
himself,  there  actually  are  inserted  in  the  Hebrew  long 
Aramaic  passages.  Before  the  time  of  Christ,  people 
who  were  not  scholars  had  ceased  to  understand  Hebrew 
altogether  ;^^^  and  in  the  synagogue,  when  the  Bible  was 
read,  the  Meturgeman,  as  he  was  called,  that  is  a  "  drago- 
man," or  qualified  translator,  had  to  rise  and  give  the 
sense  of  the  passage  in  the  vulgar  dialect.  The  Penta- 
teuch was  read  verse  by  verse,  or  in  lessons  from  the 


LECT.  II.  JEWISH  SCHOOLS,  49 

Prophets  three  verses  were  read  together,  and  then  the 
Meturgeman  rose,  and  did  not  read,  but  gave  orally  in 
Aramaic  the  sense  of  the  original/^^^  Hebrew  then,  by 
this  time,  was  a  learned  language,  acquired  not  in  com- 
mon life  but  in  the  school.  In  order  to  learn  Hebrew, 
the  young  Jew  had  to  go  to  school,  but  he  had  no  gram- 
mar or  lexicon,  or  other  written  help,  to  assist  him.  It 
was  not  possible  for  him  therefore  to  study  the  language 
of  the  Old  Testament  as  we  study  Latin  or  Greek  Every- 
thing was  done  by  the  oral  instruction  of  the  teacher, 
and  by  dint  of  sheer  memory,  without  any  scientific 
principle.  In  the  first  place,  the  pupil  had  to  learn  to 
read.  In  our  Hebrew  Bibles  now,  the  pronunciation 
of  each  word  is  exactly  represented.  This  is  done  by 
a  double  notation.  The  letters  proper  are  the  conson- 
ants, and  the  vowels  are  indicated  by  small  marks  placed 
above  or  below  the  line  of  the  consonants.  These  smaU 
marks  are  a  late  invention.  They  did  not  exist  in  the 
time  of  Christ,  or  even  four  hundred  years  after  his  time, 
at  the  time  of  Jerome.^"^  Before  this  invention  the  proper 
pronunciation  of  each  difficult  word  had  to  be  acquired 
from  a  master.  "WTien  a  pupil  had  learned  to  read  a 
phrase  correctly,  he  was  taught  the  meaning  of  the 
words,  and  by  such  exercises,  combined  with  the  practice 
of  constantly  speaking  Hebrew,  which  was  kept  up  in 
the  Jewish  schools,  as  the  practice  of  speaking  Latin 
used  to  be  kept  up  in  our  grammar  schools,  the  pupil 
gradually  got  a  practical  command  of  the  Hebrew  tongue. 
It  is  easy  to  understand  what  kind  of  knowledge   of 


50  UNPOINTED  TEXT.  lect.  ii. 

Hebrew  this  sort  of  study  produced.  The  student  ac- 
quired a  certain  practical  fluency  in  speaking  or  writing 
'*  the  language  of  the  wise  "  as  it  was  called.  The  lan- 
guage of  the  Bible  itself  was  called  "  the  holy  tongue." 
The  Hebrew  as  it  was  spoken  in  the  schools,  varying  as 
we  shall  presently  see  to  some  considerable  extent  from 
the  Hebrew  of  the  Bible,  was  called  "  the  language  of 
the  wise."  We  have  many  volumes  of  the  composition 
of  these  scholars,  chiefly  legal  works,  with  some  old  mid- 
rashiyn,  as  they  are  called,  or  sermonising  commentaries 
on  Scripture.  These  books  no  doubt  are  Hebrew  in  a 
certain  sense,  but  they  are  as  unlike  to  the  Biblical 
Hebrew  as  a  lawyer's  deed  is  to  a  page  of  Cicero.  The 
men  who  wrote  such  a  jargon  could  not  have  any  deli- 
cate perception  for  the  niceties  of  the  old  classical  lan- 
guage, especially  as  it  is  written  in  the  most  ancient 
books ;  and  when  they  came  to  a  difficult  passage  they 
could  only  guess  at  the  sense,  unless  they  possessed  an 
interpretation  of  the  hard  text,  and  the  hard  words  it 
contained,  handed  down  to  them  from  some  older 
scholar. 

Now  let  me  ask  you  once  more  to  realise  precisely 
how  these  scribes,  at  and  before  the  time  of  Christ,  pro- 
ceeded in  dealing  with  the  Bible.  They  had  nothing  before 
them  but  the  bare  text  denuded  of  its  vowels,  so  that 
the  same  words  might  often  be  read  and  interpreted  in 
two  different  ways.  A  familiar  example  of  this  is  given 
in  Heb.  xi.  21,  where  we  read  of  Jacob  leaning  upon 
the  top  of  his  "  staff ; "  but  when  we  turn  to  our  Hebrew 


LECT.  II.  ORAL  TEACHING.  61  \ 

1 
i 

Bible,  as  it  is  now  printed  (Genesis  xlvii.  31),  we  there  ! 

find  nothing  about  the  "  staff;"  we  find  the  "bed."    WeU, 

the  Hebrew  for  "  the  bed  "  is  "  HaMMiTTaH,"  while  the  71^  ^ 

Hebrew  for  "  the  staff"  is  "  HaMMaTTeH."     The  con-  p^  y, 

sonants  in  these  two  words  are  the  same ;  the  vowels       • ;    - 

are  different;  but  the  consonants  only  were  written,  and 

therefore,  it  was  quite  possible  for  one  person  to  read  j 

the  word  as  "  bed,"  as  is  now  the  case  in  our  English  \ 

Bible,  following  the  reading  of  the  Hebrew  scribes,  and 

for  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  on  the  | 

other  hand,  to  understand  it  as  a  "  staff,"  following  the  | 

interpretation  of  the  Greek  Septuagint, 

Beyond  the  bare  text,  which  in  this  way  was  often  \ 

ambiguous,  the  scribes  had  no  guide  but  oral  teaching.  1 

They  had  no  rules  of  grammar  to  go  by ;  the  kind  of  ! 

Hebrew  which  they  themselves  wrote  often  admitted  \ 

grammatical  constructions  which  the  old  language  for-  \ 

bade,  and  when  they  came  to  an  obsolete  word  or  idiom, 
they  had  no  guide  to  its  meaning,  unless  their  masters  \ 

had  told  them  that  the  pronunciation  and  the  sense 
were  so  and  so.    Now,  beyond  doubt  the  Jewish  scholars  i 

were  most  exact  and  retentive  learners,  and  their  mas- 
ters spared  no  pains  to  teach  them  all  that  they  knew.  We 
in  the  West  have  little  idea  of  the  precision  with  which 
an  Eastern  pupil  even  now  can  take  up  and  remember 
the  minutest   details  of   a   lesson,    reproducing    them  I 

years  afterwards  in  the  exact  words  of  his  master.     But  ' 

memory,  even  when  cultivated  as  it  is  cultivated  in  1 

the  schools  of  the  East,  is  at  best  fallible  ;  and  even  if  i 


52  THE  TRADITION  lect.  ii. 

we  could  suppose  that  the  whole  of  the  Bible  had  been 
taught  word  by  word  in  the  schools,  in  unbroken  suc- 
cession from  the  day  on  which  each  book  was  first  writ- 
ten, it  would  still  have  required  a  continued  miracle  to 
preserve  all  these  lessons  perfectly  and  without  writing 
through  long  generations.  But  in  point  of  fact  the 
traditional  teaching  of  the  Jews  was  neither  complete, 
nor  continuous,  nor  uniform. 

It  was  not  complete ;  that  is,  there  never  was  an 
authoritative  interpretation  of  the  whole  Bible.  It  was 
not  continuous ;  that  is,  many  interpretations,  which  at 
some  time  had  general  currency  and  authority,  were 
figments  of  the  Eabbins  which  they  had  not  received 
by  unbroken  tradition  from  the  time  when  Hebrew 
became  a  dead  language,  much  less  from  the  time  when 
the  passage  was  first  written — interpretations  not  received 
by  original  tradition  but  devised  by  the  Eabbins  out  of 
their  own  heads.  And  finally,  the  Eabbinical  tradition 
was  not  uniform;  that  is,  the  interpretation  and  even 
the  reading  of  individual  texts  w^as  often  a  subject  of 
controversy  in  the  schools  of  the  Scribes,  and  at  differ- 
ent times  we  find  different  interpretations  in  the 
ascendant.  The  proof  of  these  propositions  lies  partly 
in  the  records  of  Jewish  learning  still  preserved  in  the 
Eabbinical  literature ;  partly  it  lies  in  the  translations 
and  interpretations  made  at  various  times  by  Jewish 
scholars  or  under  their  guidance. 

So  long  as  the  transmission  and  interpretation  of  the 
Bible  were  left  to  the  unregulated  labours  of  individual 


LECT.  II.  OF  THE  SCRIBES.  53 

scholars  or  copyists,  it  is  plain  that  individual  theories 
and  individual  errors  would  have  some  influence  on  the 
work.  The  Bible  had  to  be  copied  by  the  pen.  Let  us 
suppose  then  that  the  copyist,  without  any  special  in- 
struction or  guide,  simply  sat  down  to  make  a  transcript, 
probably  writing  from  dictation,  of  the  MS.  which  he 
had  bought  or  borrowed.  In  the  first  place,  he  was 
almost  certain  to  make  some  slips,  either  of  the  pen  or 
of  the  ear ;  but  besides  this,  in  all  probability  the  volume 
before  liim  would  contain  slips  of  the  previous  copyist. 
Was  he  to  copy  these  mistakes  exactly  as  they  stood, 
and  so  perpetuate  the  error,  or  would  he  not  in  very 
many  cases  tliink  himself  able  to  detect  and  correct  the 
slips  of  his  predecessor  ?  If  he  took  the  latter  course,  it 
was  very  possible  for  him  to  overrate  his  own  capacity 
and  make  a  new  mistake.  And  so  bit  by  bit,  if  there 
were  no  control,  if  each  scribe  acted  independently,  and 
without  the  assistance  of  a  regular  school,  errors  were 
sure  to  be  multiplied,  and  the  text  would  be  certain  to 
present  many  variations.  Thus  we  know  that  even  in 
recent  times  the  Gaelic  version  of  the  Old  Testament 
contains  certain  alterations  upon  the  original  text  made 
in  order  to  remove  seeming  contradictions.  Much  more 
were  such  changes  to  be  anticipated  in  ancient  times, 
when  there  was  a  far  less  developed  sense  of  responsi- 
bility with  regard  to  the  verbal  transcription  of  old 
texts.  A  uniform  and  scrupulous  tradition,  watching 
over  the  reading  and  the  meaning  of  the  text  in  all  parts 
of  the  Jewish  world,  could  only  be  transmitted  by  a 


54  PHARISEES  AND  SADDUCEES.      lect.  ii. 

regular  school  of  scholars,  or,  as  the  Jewish  records 
call  them,  a  school  of  Scribes,  that  is,  men  of  the  book — 
men  who  were  professionally  occupied  with  the  book  of 
the  law. 

We  are  all  familiar  with  these  Scribes,  or  professed 
Biblical  scholars,  as  they  appear  in  the  New  Testament. 
Their  principles  at  that  epoch,  as  we  know,  were  those 
of  the  Pharisees;  in  fact,  the  Pharisees  were  nothing  else 
than  the  party  of  the  Scribes,  in  opposition  to  the  Sad- 
ducees  or  aristocratic  party.  To  the  Sadducees,  or 
aristocratic  party,  the  higher  priestly  nobility  belonged. 
To  the  Pharisees,  or  party  of  the  Scribes,  belonged  the 
great  mass  of  Jewish  scholars  who  were  not  closely 
associated  with  the  higher  ranks  of  the  priesthood, 
together  with  many  who,  without  being  scholars,  were 
eager  to  obey  the  law  as  the  Scribes  interpreted  it.  Those 
Scribes  were  the  men  who  had  in  their  hands  the  trans- 
mission and  interpretation  of  the  Old  Testament ;  and 
our  next  task,  in  endeavouring  to  understand  the  steps 
by  which  the  Old  Testament  has  been  handed  down  to 
us,  must  be  to  obtain  a  clear  vision  of  their  methods  and 
objects,  and  of  the  work  which  they  actually  did  upon 
the  Old  Testament  as  we  now  possess  it.  This  subject 
will  occupy  our  attention  in  next  Lecture. 


LECT.  III.  THE  SCRIBES.  55 


LECTUEE  IIL 


THE  SCRIBES/^^ 


The  subject  with  wliich  we  are  to  be  occupied  to-day  is 
the  part  that  was  played  by  the  Scribes  iu  the  preserva- 
tion and  transmission  of  the  Old  Testament.  At  the 
close  of  last  Lecture  we  looked  for  a  moment  at  the 
Scribes  as  they  appear  in  the  New  Testament  in  asso- 
ciation with  the  Pharisees.  At  that  time,  as  one  sees 
from  the  Gospels  and  the  Acts,  they  constituted  a  party 
long  established,  and  exercising  a  great  and  recognised 
influence  in  the  Jewish  state.  In  fact  they  go  back  as 
far  as  the  later  times  of  the  Old  Testament.  Their 
father  is  Ezra, "  the  Scribe,"  as  he  is  called  far  excellence, 
who  came  from  Babylon  to  Judaea  with  the  law  of  God 
in  his  hand  (Ezra  vii.  14),  and  with  a  heart  "  prepared 
to  study  the  law  of  the  Lord,  to  do  it,  and  to  teach  in 
Israel  statutes  and  judgments"  (Ezra  vii.  10).  Ezra 
accomplished  this  task,  not  immediately,  but  with  ulti- 
mate and  complete  success.  He  did  so  with  the  support 
of  the  Persian  king,  and  with  the  immediate  assistance 
of  Nehemiah,  who  had  been  sent  by  Artaxerxes  as 
governor  of  Jerusalem.  At  a  great  public  meeting 
convened  by  Nehemiah,  of  which  we  read  an  account 


56  THE  SCRIBES  lect.  hi. 

in  chapters  viii.  to  x.  of  the  book  which  bears  his  name, 
the  Law  was  openly  read  before  the  people  at  the  Feast 
of  Tabernacles,  and,  with  confession  and  penitence,  the 
Jews  entered  into  a  national  covenant  to  make  that  law 
henceforth  the  rule  of  their  lives.  Now  I  do  not  ask  at 
present  what  were  the  relations  of  the  people  to  the 
Law  before  the  time  of  Ezra.  That  question  must  come 
up  afterwards ;  but  any  one  who  reads  with  attention 
the  narrative  in  the  book  of  Nehemiah  must  be  satisfied 
that  this  work  of  Ezra,  and  the  covenant  which  the  * 
people  took  upon  them  to  obey  the  Law,  were  of  epoch- 
making  importance  for  the  Jewish  community.  It  was 
not  merely  a  covenant  to  amend  certain  abuses  in 
detailed  points  of  legal  observance ;  for  the  people  in 
their  confession  very  distinctly  state  that  the  Law  had 
not  been  observed  by  their  ancestors,  their  rulers,  or 
their  priests,  up  to  that  time  (Neh.  ix.  34) ;  and  in  par- 
ticular it  is  mentioned  that  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles 
had  never  been  observed  according  to  the  Law  from  the 
time  that  the  Israelites  occupied  Canaan  under  Joshua, 
— that  is,  of  course,  never  at  all  (Neh.  viii.  17).  Ac- 
cordingly this  covenant  must  be  regarded  as  a  critical 
epoch  in  the  history  of  the  community  of  Israel.  From 
that  time  forward,  with  the  assistance  and  under  the 
approval  of  the  Persian  king,  the  Law — that  is,  the 
Pentateuch  or  Torah,  as  we  now  have  it  (for  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  Law  which  was  in  Ezra's  hands 
was  practically  identical  with  our  present  Hebrew 
Pentateuch) — ^became  the  religious  and  municipal  code 


LECT.  III.  AND  THE  TORAH.  57 

of  Israel.  Now,  as  soon  as  the  Torah  was  accepted  as 
a  practical  code,  the  work  of  the  Scribes  became  indis- 
pensable. For  the  Pentateuch,  viewed  as  a  code,  is 
such  a  book  as  imperatively  calls  for  a  class  of  trained 
lawyers  to  be  its  interpreters.  I  do  not  ask  at  present 
whether,  as  most  critics  suppose,  there  are  real  contra- 
dictions between  the  laws  given  in  different  parts  of  the 
five  books  of  Moses.  At  all  events,  it  is  a  familiar  fact 
that  those  who  maintain  that  all  the  Pentateuchal  laws 
can  be  reconciled,  differ  very  much  among  themselves 
as  to  the  precise  method  of  reconciliation.  No  two 
commentators  who  attempt  to  digest  all  parts  of  the 
Pentateuch  into  a  harmonious  body  of  precepts  agree  in 
all  their  interpretations.  In  such  an  ambiguity  of  the 
Law  it  is  manifest  that  the  Scribes  had  an  indispensable 
function  as  guides  of  the  people  to  that  intei-pretation 
which  was  in  actual  use  in  the  practical  administration 
of  the  code.  Accordingly,  by-and-by,  in  the  time  of 
the  Chronicles  (1  Chron.  ii.  55),  we  find  them  organised 
in  regular  "  families,"  or,  as  we  should  now  say,  "  guilds," 
an  institution  quite  in  accordance  with  the  whole  spirit 
of  the  East,  which  forms  a  guild  or  trades-union  of 
every  class  possessing  special  technical  knowledge.^"^ 

We  see,  then,  that  before  the  close  of  the  Old 
Testament  Canon  the  Scribes  not  only  existed,  con- 
tinuing the  work  of  Ezra,  but  that  they  existed  in  the 
form  of  guilds  or  regular  societies.  What  were  their 
objects  ?  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  from  the  first  the 
objects  of  the  Scribes  were  not  philological,  not  scien- 


58  HA  LAC  HA  AND  HAG  GAD  A.         lect.  hi. 

tific,  but  practical.  Ezra's  object  was  so.  He  came  to 
make  the  Law  the  practical  rule  of  Israel's  life,  and  so  it 
was  still  in  later  ages.  The  wisdom  of  the  Scribes  con- 
sisted of  two  parts,  which  in  Jewish  terminology  were 
respectively  called  "  Halacha  "  and  "  Haggada."  "  Hal- 
acha "  was  legal  teaching,  systematised  legal  precept  ; 
while  "  Haggada  "  was  doctrinal  and  practical  admoni- 
tion, mingled  with  parable  and  legend.  But  of  these 
two  parts  the  "  Halacha," — that  is,  the  system  of  rules 
applying  the  Pentateuchal  law  to  every  case  of  practice 
and  every  detail  of  life, — was  always  the  chief  thing. 
The  difference  between  the  learned  theologian  and  the 
unlearned  vulgar  lay  in  knowledge  of  the  Law.  You 
remember  what  the  Pharisees  say  in  John  vii.  49 — 
"  This  people,  wliich  knoweth  not  the  law,  are  cursed." 
The  Law  was  the  ideal  of  the  Scribes.  Their  theory  of 
the  history  of  Israel  was  this. — In  time  past  Israel  had 
been  chastised  by  God's  wrath ;  the  cause  of  this  chas- 
tisement was  that  the  people  had  neglected  the  Law. 
Forgetting  the  Law,  Israel  had  passed  and  was  still  pass- 
ing through  many  tribulations,  and  was  subjected  to  the 
yoke  of  a  foreign  power.  What  was  the  duty  of  the 
Jews  in  this  condition  of  things  ?  According  to  the 
Scribes,  it  was  not  to  engage  in  any  political  scheme 
whatever  for  throwing  off  the  foreign  yoke,  but  to 
establish  the  Law  in  their  own  midst, — to  apply  them- 
selves, not  only  to  obey  the  whole  Torah,  particularly 
in  its  ceremonial  precepts,  but  so  to  develop  these  pre- 
cepts that  they  might  embrace  every  minute  detail  of 


LECT.  III.  PHARISAISM.  69 

life.  Then,  wlien  by  this  means  Israel  had  become  a 
law-obeying  nation  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word, 
Jehovah  Himself,  in  His  righteousness,  would  inter- 
vene, miraculously  remove  the  scourge,  and  establish  the 
glory  of  His  law-fulfilling  people.  These  were  the  prui- 
ciples  of  the  Scribes  and  the  Pharisees,  the  principles 
spoken  of  by  Paul  in  writing  to  the  Piomans,  when  he 
tells  us  that  Israel,  following  after  the  law  of  righteous- 
ness, did  not  attain  to  the  law  of  righteousness ;  that 
they,  being  ignorant  of  God's  righteousness,  and  going 
about  to  establish  their  own  righteousness,  did  not  sub- 
mit themselves  unto  the  righteousness  of  God  (Eom. 
ix.  31 ;  X.  3). 

Now,  all  that  the  Scribes  did  for  the  transmission, 
preservation,  and  interpretation  of  the  Old  Testament, 
was  guided  by  these  legal  aims.  In  the  first  instance, 
they  were  not  scholars,  not  preachers,  but  "  lawyers " 
iyoyuiKo'C),  as  they  are  often  called  in  the  New  Testament. 
In  their  juridical  decisions  they  were  guided  partly  by 
study  of  the  Pentateuch,  but  partly  also  by  observation  of 
the  actual  legal  usages  of  their  time,  by  those  views  of  the 
Law  which  were  practically  acknowledged,  for  example, 
in  the  ceremonial  of  the  temple  and  the  priesthood. 
There  was  thus,  in  the  wisdom  of  the  Scribes,  an  element 
of  use  and  wont, — an  element  of  common  law,  which 
of  course  existed  in  Jerusalem  as  in  every  other  living 
community  side  by  side  with  the  codified  written  law ; 
and  this  element  of  common  law,  or  use  and  wont,  was 
the  source  of  the  theory  of  legal  tradition  familiar  to  all 


60  GROWTH  OF  THE  lect.  hi. 

of  us  from  allusions  in  the  New  Testament.  According 
to  this  theory,  Moses  himself  had  delivered  to  Israel  an 
oral  law  along  with  the  written  Torah.  The  oral  law 
was  as  old  as  the  Pentateuch,  and  had  come  down  in 
authentic  form  through  the  prophets  to  Ezra.  The 
conception  of  an  oral  law,  as  old  and  venerable  as  the 
written  law,  necessarily  influenced  the  Scribes  in  all 
their  interpretations  of  Scripture.  It  introduced  into 
their  handling  of  Scripture  an  element  of  uncertainty 
and  falsity,  upon  which  Jesus  Himself,  as  you  will 
remember,  put  His  finger,  with  that  unfailing  insight 
of  His  into  the  unsound  parts  of  the  religious  state  of 
His  time.  Through  their  theory  of  the  traditional  law 
the  Scribes  were  led  into  many  a  departure  from  the 
spirit,  and  even  from  the  letter  of  the  written  Word 
(Matt.  xii.  1-8  ;  xv.  1-20 ;  xxiii.) 

To  the  Scribes,  then,  the  whole  law,  written  and 
oral,  was  of  equal  practical  authority.  What  they 
really  sought  to  preserve  intact,  and  hand  down  as 
binding  for  Israel,  was  not  so  much  the  written  text  of 
the  Pentateuch  as  their  own  rules, — partly  derived  from 
the  Pentateuch,  but  partly,  as  we  have  seen,  from  other 
sources, — which  they  honestly  believed  to  be  equally  an 
expression  of  the  mind  of  the  Eevealer,  even  in  cases 
where  they  had  no  basis  in  Scripture,  or  only  the 
basis  of  some  very  strained  interpretation.  Now,  you 
can  readily  conceive  that  the  traditional  interpretation 
of  the  law  could  not  be  stationary.  In  fact,  we  know 
that  it  was  not  so.     The  subject  has  been  gone  into 


LECT.  III.  TRADITIONAL  LA  W.  61 

with  great  care  by  Jewish  scholars,  who  are  more  inter- 
ested than  we  are  in  the  traditional  law  ;  and  they  have 
been  able  to  prove,  from  their  own  books  and  written 
records  of  the  legal  traditions,  that  that  law  underwent, 
from  century  to  century,  not  a  few  changes.  This  was 
no  more  than  natural.      So  loner  as   a  nation   has  a 

o 

national  life,  lives  and  develops  new  practical  necessi- 
ties, there  must  also  from  time  to  time  be  changes  in  the 
law  and  its  application.  In  part,  then,  the  growth  of 
the  traditional  law  was  owing  to  changes  and  new 
necessities  of  the  national  life.  It  would  doubtless, 
from  this  source  alone,  have  grown  and  changed  very 
much  more,  but  for  the  fact,  that  between  Ezra  and  the 
time  of  Christ  the  Jews  were  almost  continuously  under 
foreign  domination,  so  that  they  had  not  perfect  freedom 
of  civil  or  even  religious  development.  At  the  same 
time,  they  always  retained  a  certain  amount  of  muni- 
cipal independence ;  and  so  long  as  the  municipal  life 
remained  active,  the  law  necessarily  underwent  modi- 
fications from  time  to  time. 

But  there  was  another  reason  for  continual  changes 
in  the  traditional  law.  The  party  headed  by  the  Scribes, 
which  finally  developed  into  the  Pharisees,  were  led  by 
their  exaggerated  conceptions  of  the  importance  of  legal 
and  ceremonial  righteousness  as  the  one  source  of  felicity 
in  Israel — they  were  led,  I  say,  by  this  exaggerated  con- 
ception of  legality  to  make,  as  they  called  it,  a  hedge 
round  the  Law — that  is,  constantly  to  expand  the  com- 
pass of  legal  precept ;  to  extend  the  sphere  of  ceremonial 
4 


62  THE  SANHEDRIM,  lect.  hi. 

observances  outside  of  wtiat  lay  in  the  Pentateuch  and 
in  the  oldest  form  of  tradition,  so  that  it  might  be  im- 
possible for  a  man,  if  he  observed  all  their  traditional 
rules,  to  come  even  within  sight  of  a  possible  breach  of 
the  Law.  Now  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  who  developed 
this  tendency  were  not  the  governing  class  in  Judaea. 
The  governors  of  the  nation  in  its  internal  matters  were 
the  priestly  aristocracy,  with  the  high  priest  at  their 
head  as  a  sort  of  hereditary  prince  over  Israel.  Never- 
theless the  great  Eabbins  of  the  party  of  Scribes  were 
men  whose  legal  ability  gained  for  them  a  commanding 
position  and  influence ;  while  the  mass  of  the  Pharisees, 
by  their  claim  of  special  sanctity  and  special  legality, 
also  acquired  great  weight  with  the  common  people ; 
and  in  consequence  of  this  the  authority  of  the  party 
ultimately  became  so  great  that,  as  we  learn  from 
Josephus,  the  priestly  aristocracy,  who  were  the  civil 
as  well  as  the  religious  heads  of  the  Jews,  and  who 
themselves  were  no  more  inclined  than  any  other 
aristocracy  to  make  changes  that  were  not  for  their 
own  personal  profit,  yet  found  themselves  compelled  by 
the  pressure  of  public  opinion  to  defer  in  almost  every 
instance  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Scribes.^^^  The  municipal 
and  legal  administration  took  place  by  means  of  councils 
bearing  the  name  of  Synedria  or  Sanhedrin.  There  was 
a  central  council  with  judicial  and  administrative  author 
rity — the  Great  Sanhedrin  in  Jerusalem — and  there  were 
local  councils  in  provincial  towns.  These  councils  were 
mainly  occupied  by  Sadducees,  or  men  of  the  aristocratic 


LECT.  III.  THE  MISHNA.  C3 

party ;  but  ultimately  the  Scribes,  as  trained  lawyers, 
gained  a  considerable  proportion  of  seats  in  them ;  and 
during  the  latter  time  of  the  Maccabees  under  Queen 
Salome,  and  still  more  after  the  fall  of  the  Hasmonean 
dynasty,  when  it  w^as  the  policy  of  Herod  the  Great 
to  crush  the  old  nobility  and  play  off  the  Pharisees 
against  them,  the  influence  of  the  Scribes  in  the  national 
councils  of  justice  came  greatly  to  outweigh  that  of  the 
aristocratic  Sadducees.  In  this  w^ay,  as  you  will  observe, 
the  interpreters  of  the  law  gained  a  very  important  place 
in  the  practical  life  of  Israel ;  and  they  continued  active, 
developing  and  applying  their  peculiar  system,  until  the 
overthrow  of  the  city  by  Titus  in  the  year  a.d.  70  de- 
prived the  law  of  much  of  its  national  importance. 
When  the  Temple  was  destroyed,  and  when  the  Jewish 
nationality  was  crushed,  a  great  part  of  the  public  or- 
dinances decreed  by  the  Scribes  fell  into  desuetude, 
though  private  and  personal  observances  of  ceremonial 
righteousness  were  still  insisted  upon.  Further  deve- 
lopment became  impossible,  or  was  limited  to  a  much 
narrower  range;  and  after  the  last  desperate  struggle 
of  the  Jews  for  liberty  under  Hadrian,  a.d.  132  to  135, 
the  Scribes,  no  longer  able  to  find  a  practical  out- 
let for  their  influence  in  the  guidance  of  the  state, 
devoted  themselves  to  systematising  and  writing  down 
the  traditional  law  in  the  stage  which  it  had  then 
reached.  This  systematisation  took  shape  in  the  col- 
lection which  is  called  the  Mishna,  which  was  completed 
by  Eabbi  Judah  the  Holy  about  A.D.  200.^"^^ 


G4  THE  POLL-TAX  lect.  hi. 

I  have  directed  your  attention  to  the  history  of  the 
traditional  law  because  its  transmission  was  inseparably 
bound  up  with  the  transmission  of  the  text  of  the  Bible. 
As  we  have  seen,  the  whole  law,  written  and  oral,  was 
one  in  the  estimation  of  the  Scribes.  The  early  ver- 
sions and  the  early  Jewish  commentaries  show  us  that 
the  interpretation  of  the  Pentateuch  was  guided  by 
legal  much  rather  than  by  philological  principles.  The 
Bible  was  understood  by  the  help  of  the  Halacha  quite 
as  much  as  the  Halacha  was  based  upon  the  Bible ; 
and  so,  as  the  traditional  law  underwent  many  changes, 
these  reacted  upon  the  interpretation  and  even  to  a 
certain  extent  upon  the  reading  of  the  text  of  the 
Pentateuch.  Let  me  take  an  example  of  this  from  what 
we  find  in  the  Bible  itself.  In  Neh.  x.  32  we  read  that 
the  people  made  a  law  for  themselves,  charging  them- 
selves with  a  yearly  poll-tax  of  one-third  of  a  shekel 
for  the  service  of  the  Temple.  In  the  time  of  Christ 
this  tribute  of  one-third  of  a  shekel  had  been  increased 
to  half  a  shekel  {didraclima ;  Matt.  xvii.  24,  margin)-, 
and  the  impost  which  in  the  time  of  Nehemiah  was  a 
tax  voluntarily  taken  upon  themselves  by  the  people 
without  any  written  warrant,  was  in  this  later  time 
supposed  to  be  based  upon  Exodus  xxx.  12-16.  This 
view  of  the  matter,  indeed,  is  already  taken  by  the 
Chronicler;  for  he  speaks  of  a  yearly  Mosaic  impost 
for  the  maintenance  of  the  Temple  (2  Chron.  xxiv.  5,  6), 
and  therefore  even  in  his  time  the  passage  in  the  30th 
chapter  of  Exodus  must  have  been  held  to  be  the  basis 


LECT.  III.  AND  THE  TITHES.  65 

of  the  poll-tax.  Yet  that  tax  was  a  new  tax ;  it  was 
first  assumed  in  the  time  of  Nehemiah ;  and  it  is  only 
an  afterthought  of  the  Scribes  to  base  it  upon  the 
Pentateuch.  This  example  illustrates  one  way  in  which 
the  conception  of  the  law  changed  in  the  hands  of  the 
Scribes.  In  other  cases  they  actually  took  it  upon 
themselves  to  alter  Pentateuchal  laws.  For  example, 
the  tithes  were  transferred  from  the  Levites  to  the 
priests,  and  the  use  of  the  liturgy  prescribed  in  Deu- 
teronomy xxvi.  12-15  on  occasion  of  the  tithing,  which 
was  not  suitable  after  that  change  had  been  made,  was 
abolished  by  John  Hyrcanus,  the  Hasmonean  prince 
and  high  priest.^""^  These  are  but  single  examples  out  of 
many  which'  might  be  adduced,  but  are  enough  to 
show  that  so  long  as  the  development  of  the  oral  law 
was  running  its  course,  the  written  law  was  treated  by 
the  Scribes  with  a  certain  measure  of  freedom. 

Their  real  interest,  I  repeat,  lay  not  in  the  sacred 
text  itself,  but  in  the  practical  system  based  upon  it. 
That  comes  out  very  forcibly  in  repeated  passages  of 
the  Eabbinical  writings,  in  which  the  study  of  Scripture 
is  spoken  of  almost  contemptuously,  as  something  far 
inferior  to  the  study  of  the  traditional  legislative  system. 

Now,  people  often  think  of  the  eTews  as  entirely 
absorbed,  from  the  very  first,  in  the  exact  grammatical 
study  and  literal  preservation  of  the  written  Word. 
Had  this  been  so,  they  could  never  have  devised  so 
many  expositions  which  are  plainly  against  the  idiom 
of  the  Hebrew  language,  but  which  flowed  naturally  and 


GQ  RISE  OF  A  lect.  hi. 

easily  from  the  legal  positions  tlien  current.  The  early 
Scribes  had  neither  the  inclination  nor  the  philological 
qualifications  for  exact  scholarly  study,  and  when  they 
did  lay  weight  upon  some  verbal  nicety  of  the  sacred 
Text,  they  did  so  in  the  interest  of  some  legal  theory  of 
their  own,  and  upon  principles  to  which  we  can  assign 
no  value.  No  doubt  the  Scribes  and  their  successors 
in  the  Talmudic  times  (a.d.  200  to  600)  must  them- 
selves have  been  quite  aware  that  the  meanings  which 
they  forced  upon  texts,  in  order  to  carry  out  their  legal 
system,  were  not  natural  and  idiomatic  renderings.  But 
this  did  not  greatly  trouble  them,  for  it  was  to  them  an 
axiom  that  the  oral  and  traditional  laws  were  one 
system,  and,  therefore,  they  were  bound  to  harmonise 
the  two  at  any  sacrifice  of  the  rules  of  language.  The 
objections  to  such  an  arbitrary  exegesis  did  not  come  to 
be  strongly  felt  till  long  after  the  Talmudic  period, 
when  a  new  school  of  Jewish  scholars  arose,  who  had 
grammatical  and  scientific  knowledge,  mainly  derived 
from  the  learning  of  the  Arabs.  When  in  the  Middle 
Ages  these  Eabbins  introduced  a  stricter  system  of 
grammatical  interpretation,  it  soon  came  to  be  felt  that 
the  Talmudic  way  of  dealing  with  Scripture  was  often 
quite  forced  and  unnatural,  and  so  it  was  found  neces- 
sary to  draw  a  sharp  distinction  between  the  traditional 
Talmudic  interpretation  of  any  text,  which  continued  to 
have  the  value  of  an  indisputable  legal  authority,  and 
the  grammatical  interpretation  or  P'shat,  representing 
that  exact  and  natural  sense  of  the  passage  which  the 


LF.CT.  III.  GRAMMATICAL  EXEGESIS.  67 

more  modern  study  had  enabled  men  to  determine  ^yith 
sharpness  and  precision. 

The  mediaeval  Eabbins  concentrated  their  atten- 
tion on  the  plain  grammatical  sense  of  Scripture,  and 
their  best  doctors,  who  were  the  masters  of  our  Protest- 
ant translators,  rose  much  above  the  Talmudical  exegesis, 
although  they  never  altogether  shook  off  the  false  prin- 
ciple that  a  good  sense  must  be  got  out  of  everything, 
and  that  if  it  cannot  be  got  out  of  the  text  by  the  rules 
of  grammar,  these  rules  must  just  give  way.  Even  our 
own  Bible,  wliich  rests  almost  entirely  upon  the  better 
or  grammatical  school  of  Jewish  interpretation,  does, 
in  some  passages,  show  traces  of  the  Talmudical  weak- 
ness of  determining  to  harmonise  things,  and  get  over 
difficulties,  even  at  the  expense  of  strict  grammar ;  but 
this  false  tendency  was  confined  within  narrow  limits ; 
and,  on  the  whole,  the  influence  of  the  Talmudists  was 
almost  completely  conquered  in  the  Protestant  versions, 
though  it  is  still  felt  in  the  harmonistic  exegesis  of  the 
anti-critical  school.^"^ 

A  much  more  serious  point  is  raised  by  the  consider- 
ation that  although  we  are  able  to  correct  the  interpret- 
ations of  the  ancient  Scribes,  we  have  the  text  of  the 
Hebrew  Old  Testament  as  they  gave  it  to  us ;  and  we 
must  therefore  inquire  whether  they  were  in  a  position 
to  hand  down  to  us  the  best  possible  text.  Let  me 
illustrate  the  significance  of  this  question,  by  referring 
to  the  history  of  the  text  of  the  New  Testament.  The 
books  of  the  New  Testament  circulated  in  manuscript 


68  THE  TEXT  OF  THE  lect.  hi. 

copies,  and  it  is  by  a  comparison  of  such  old  codices  as 
still  remain  to  us  that  scholars  adjust  the  printed  texts 
of  their  modern  editions.  The  comparison  shows  that 
the  old  copies  often  differ  in  their  readings.  Some  of  the 
variations  are  mere  slips  of  the  transcriber,  which  any 
Greek  scholar  can  correct  as  readily  as  one  corrects  a 
slip  made  in  writing  a  letter ;  but  others  are  more  serious. 
Those  of  you  who  have  not  access  to  the  Greek  Testa- 
ment, will  find  sufficient  examples  either  in  the  small 
English  New  Testament,  published  by  Tischendorf  in 
1869,  which  gives  the  readings  of  three  ancient  MSS.,  or 
in  that  very  convenient  book,  Eyre  and  Spottiswoode's 
Sunday  School  Centenary  Bible,  which,  on  the  whole, 
is  the  best  edition  of  the  English  version  for  any  one 
who  wishes  to  look  below  the  surface.  Now  if  you 
consult  such  collections  of  various  readings  as  are  given 
in  these  works,  you  w^ill  find  that,  in  various  MSS., 
words,  clauses,  and  whole  sentences  are  inserted  or 
omitted,  and  sometimes  the  insertions  change  the  whole 
meaning  of  a  passage.  In  one  or  two  instances  a  com- 
plete paragraph  appears  in  some  copies,  and  is  left  out 
in  others.  The  titles  in  particular  offer  great  variations. 
The  oldest  MSS.  do  not  prefix  the  name  of  Paul  to  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and  they  do  not  put  the  words 
"  at  Ephesus,"  into  the  first  verse  of  the  first  chapter  of 
Ephesians.  Such  changes  as  these  show  that  the  copy- 
ists of  these  times  did  not  proceed  exactly  like  law 
clerks  copying  a  deed.  They  made  additions  from 
parallel  passages,  they  wrote  things  upon  the  margin 


i.ECT.  III.  HEBRE  W  BIBLE,  69 

which  afterwards  got  into  the  text ;  and,  when  copying 
from  a  blotted  page,  they  sometimes  had  to  make  a  guess 
at  a  word.  In  these  and  other  ways  mistakes  came  in 
and  were  perpetuated ;  and  it  takes  the  best  scholarship, 
combined  with  an  acuteness  developed  by  long  practice, 
to  determine  the  true  reading  in  each  case,  and  to 
eliminate  all  corruptions. 

Now,  of  course  the  ancients  were  quite  aware  that 
such  variations  existed  among  copies,  and  in  later  times 
they  did  their  best  to  correct  the  text;  but  hardly  any 
one  will  affirm  that  the  shape  which  the  New  Testa- 
ment ultimately  took  in  the  hands  of  the  scholars  of 
Constantinople,  is  as  near  to  the  first  hand  of  the 
Apostles  as  the  text  which  a  good  modern  editor  is  able 
to  make  by  comparing  the  oldest  MSS.  which  are  still 
preserved  to  us.  Such  is  the  state  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment text,  and  such  are  the  methods  by  which  this  text 
is  corrected,  through  comparison  of  the  most  ancient 
MSS.  But  what  is  the  state  of  things  as  regards  the 
Old  Testament  ?  All  MSS.  of  the  Hebrew  Bible  (and 
we  have  none  older  than  the  ninth  century  after  Christ) 
i:epresent  one  and  the  same  text.  There  are  slight  vari- 
ations, but  these  are,  almost  without  exception,  such  as 
might  have  been  made  even  by  a  careful  copyist  acting 
under  fixed  rules,  and  do  not  affect  the  general  state  of 
the  text.  But  we  can  go  farther.  We  may  say  that 
the  text  of  the  Hebrew  Old  Testament  w^hich  we  now 
have  is  the  same  as  lay  before  Jerome  400  years 
after  Christ  ;  the  same  as  underlies  certain  translations 


70  SUSPENDED  LETTERS.  lect.  in. 

into  Clialdee  called  Targums,  wliicti  were  made  in  Baby- 
lon in  the  third  century  after  Christ ;  indeed  the  same 
text  as  was  received  by  the  Jewish  doctors  of  the  second 
century,  when  the  Mishna  was  being  formed,  and  when 
the  Jewish  proselyte  Aquila  made  liis  translation  into 
Greek.  I  do  not  affirm  that  there  were  no  various  read- 
ings in  the  copies  of  the  second  or  even  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury, but  the  variations  were  slight  and  easily  controlled, 
and  such  as  would  have  occurred  in  MSS.  carefully  tran- 
scribed from  one  standard  copy.^^^ 

The  Jews,  in  fact,  from  the  time  when  their 
national  life  was  extinguished,  and  their  whole  soul 
concentrated  upon  the  preservation  of  the  monuments 
of  the  past,  devoted  the  most  strict  and  punctilious 
attention  to  the  exact  transmission  of  the  received  text, 
down  to  the  smallest  peculiarity  of  spelling,  and  even 
to  certain  irregularities  of  writing.  Let  me  explain 
this  last  point.  We  find  that  when  the  standard 
manuscript  had  a  letter  too  big,  or  a  letter  too 
small,  the  copies  made  from  it  imitated  even  this, 
so  that  letters  of  an  unusual  size  appear  in  the  same 
place  in  every  Hebrew  Bible.  Nay,  the  scrupulous- 
ness of  the  transcribers  went  still  further.  In  old 
MSS.,  when  a  copyist  had  omitted  a  letter — there  was 
no  running  hand,  it  was  a  sort  of  printing  with  the 
pen,  so  that  a  letter  might  easily  fall  out, — and, 
when  the  error  was  detected,  as  the  copy  was  revised, 
the  reviser  inserted  the  missing  letter  above  the 
line  as  we  should  now  do  with  a  caret.     If,  on   the 


LECT.  III.  KERI  AND  KETHIB.  71 

other  hand,  the  reviser  found  that  any  superfluous  letter 
had  been  inserted,  he  cancelled  it  by  pricking  a  dot 
above  it.  Now,  when  such  corrections  occurred  in  the 
standard  MS.  from  which  our  Hebrew  Bibles  are  all 
copied,  the  error  and  the  correction  were  copied  to- 
gether, so  that  you  will  find,  even  in  printed  Bibles  (for 
the  system  has  been  carried  down  into  the  printed 
text),  letters  suspended  above  the  line  to  show  that 
they  had  been  inserted  with  a  caret,  and  letters 
"  pointed  "  with  a  dot  over  them  to  show  that  they  form 
no  proper  part  of  the  text.^^^  This  shows  with  what 
punctilious  accuracy  the  one  standard  copy  was  fol- 
lowed. In  a  few  cases,  however,  it  was  thought  neces- 
sary to  suggest  a  correction  on  the  reading  of  the  text. 
There  were  some  words,  for  example,  which  it  was  not 
thought  decorous  to  use  in  public  reading  in  the  syna- 
gogue, and  for  this  and  other  reasons,  a  few  modifica- 
tions were  prescribed  in  the  reading  of  the  text.  But 
the  rule  was  laid  down  that  you  must  not  on  that 
account  change  the  text  itself.  The  reader  simply 
learned  to  pronounce,  in  reading  certain  passages,  a 
different  word  from  that  wliich  he  found  written ;  and 
in  many  MSS.  a  note  to  this  effect  was  placed  on  the 
margin.  These  notes  are  called  Kcris,  the  word  Keri 
being  the  imperative  "  read  1 "  while  the  expression 
actually  written  in  the  text,  but  not  uttered,  is  called 
Ketliih  (written).  Now  it  is  plain  that  such  a  system  of 
mechanical  transmission  could  not  have  been  carried 
out  with  precision  if  copying  had  been  left  to  unin- 


72  MASSORETS.  lect.  hi. 

structed  persons.  The  work  of  preserving  and  trans- 
mitting the  received  text  became  the  specialty  of  a 
guild  of  technically  trained  scholars,  called  the  Masso- 
rets,  or  "  possessors  of  tradition,"  that  is,  of  tradition  as 
to  the  proper  way  of  writing  the  Bible.  The  Massorets 
laboured  for  centuries;  their  work  was  not  completed 
till  at  least  800  years  after  the  time  of  Christ ;  and  they 
collected  many  orthographical  rules  and  great  lists  of 
peculiarities  of  writing  to  be  observed  in  passages  where 
any  error  was  to  be  feared,  which  are  still  preserved 
either  as  marginal  notes  and  appendices  to  MSS.  of  the 
Bible,  or  in  separate  works.  Besides  this,  the  scholars 
of  the  period  after  the  close  of  the  Talmud — that  is,  after 
the  sixth  Christian  century,  or  thereby — devoted  them- 
selves to  preserving  not  only  the  exact  writing,  but  the 
exact  reading  and  pronunciation  of  the  Bible,  accord- 
ing to  the  rules  of  the  synagogal  chanting.  The  final 
result  of  this  labour  was  a  system  of  vowel  points  and 
musical  accents,  which  enable  the  trained  reader  to  give 
exactly  the  correct  pronunciation,  and  even  the  correct 
chanting  tone  of  every  word  of  the  Hebrew  Old  Testament. 
The  development  of  all  these  precautions  was  the 
work  of  centuries,  and  had  a  history  many  parts  of 
which  are  involved  in  obscurity.  But  the  question 
that  interests  us,  is  to  know  where  the  text  so  care- 
fully guarded  came  from.  We  have  seen  that  all 
MSS.  were  scrupulously  conformed  to  one  standard  copy ; 
but  where  and  when  was  that  copy  written,  and  haw 
did  it  come  to  acquire  such  exceptional  authority  ?    All 


LECT.  III.         SAMARITAN  PENTATEUCH.  73 

the  evidence  of  variations  and  quotations  later  tlian  the 
first  Christian  century  points  to  the  received  text  as 
abeady  existing  practically  as  we  have  it,  but  we  can- 
not follow  its  history  beyond  that  time.  On  the  con- 
trary, there  is  abundant  evidence  that  in  earlier  ages 
Hebrew  MSS.  differed  as  much  as,  or  more  than,  MSS.  of 
the  New  Testament.  We  shall  have  to  look  at  the 
proof  of  this  in  some  detail  by-and-by.  For  the  pre- 
sent, it  is  enough  to  point  out  some  of  the  chief  sources 
of  the  evidence.  The  Samaritans,  as  well  as  the  Jews, 
have  preserved  the  Hebrew  Pentateuch,  writing  it  in  a 
peculiar  character.  Well,  the  copies  of  the  Samaritan 
Pentateuch,  which  they  received  from  the  Jews  for  the 
first  time  about  430  B.C.,  differ  very  considerably  from 
our  received  Hebrew  text.  Some  of  the  variations  are 
corruptions  wilfully  introduced  in  favour  of  the  schisma- 
tic temple  on  Mount  Gerizim ;  but  others  have  no  pole- 
mical significance,  affecting  such  points  as  the  ages 
assigned  to  the  patriarchs.^'^^  Then,  again,  the  old  Greek 
version,  the  Alexandrian  version  of  the  Septuagint, 
which,  in  part  at  least,  was  written  before  the  middle  of 
the  third  century  B.C.,  contains  many  various  readings, 
sometimes  omitting  large  passages,  or  making  consider- 
able insertions  ;  sometimes  changing  the  order  of  chap- 
ters and  verses  ;  sometimes  making  only  smaller 
changes,  more  similar  to  those  with  which  we  are 
familiar  in  Greek  MSS.  Nay,  even  among  learned 
Jews  who  read  Hebrew,  the  text  was  not  fixed  up  to 
the  first  century  of  our  era.     For  the  Book  of  JuUlees,  a 


74  ADOPTION  OF  A  lect.  hi. 

Hebrew  work  which  was  written  apparently  but  a  few 
years  before  the  fall  of  the  Temple,  agrees  with  the 
Samaritan  Pentatench  in  some  of  the  numbers  in  the 
patriarchal  chronology,  and  in  other  readings/^^^ 

Now,  observe  the  point  to  wliich  we  are  thus 
brought.  After  the  fall  of  the  Jewish  state,  when  the 
Scribes  ceased  to  be  an  active  party  in  a  living  common- 
wealth, and  became  more  and  more  pure  scholars, 
gathering  up  and  codifying  all  the  fragments  of  national 
literature  and  national  life  that  remained  to  them,  we 
find  the  text  of  the  Old  Testament  carefully  conformed 
to  a  single  archetype.  But  we  cannot  trace  this  text 
back  through  the  centuries  when  the  nation  had  still  a 
life  of  its  own.  Nay,  we  can  be  sure  that  in  these 
earlier  centuries  copies  of  the  Bible  circulated,  and  were 
freely  read  even  by  learned  men  like  the  author  of  the 
Book  of  Jubilees,  which  had  great  and  notable  variations 
of  text,  not  inferior  in  extent  to  those  still  existing  in 
New  Testament  MSS.  In  later  times  every  trace  of 
these  varying  copies  disappears.  They  must  have  been 
suppressed,  or  gradually  superseded  by  a  deliberate  effort, 
which  has  been  happily  compared,  by  the  German  scholar 
Noldeke,  to  the  action  of  the  Caliph  Othman  in  destroy- 
ing all  copies  of  the  Koran  which  diverged  from  the 
standard  text  that  he  had  adopted.  There  can  be  no 
question  who  were  the  instruments  in  this  work.  The 
Scribes  alone  possessed  the  necessary  influence  to  give 
one  text  or  one  standard  MS.  a  position  of  such  supreme 
authority.      Moreover,  we  are  able  to  explain  how  it 


LECT.  III.  STANDARD  TEXT.  76 

came  about  that  the  fixing  of  a  standard  text  took  place 
about  the  Apostolic  age,  or  rather  a  little  later  than 
that  date,  and  not  at  any  earlier  time.  We  have  al- 
ready glanced  at  the  political  causes,  which  made  the 
power  of  the  Scribes  greater  in  the  time  of  Herod  than 
it  had  ever  been  before.  The  doctors  of  the  Law  wielded 
a  great  authority,  and  were  naturally  eager  to  consoli- 
date their  legal  system.  In  earlier  times  the  oral  and 
written  law  went  independently  side  by  side,  and  each 
stood  on  its  o\\ti  footing.  Therefore,  variations  in  the 
text  did  not  seriously  affect  any  practical  question. 
But  under  Eabbi  Hillel,  a  contemporary  of  Herod  the 
Great,  and  the  grandfather  of  the  Gamaliel  who  is 
mentioned  in  the  fifth  chapter  of  Acts,  a  great  change 
took  place.  It  was  the  ambition  of  Hillel  to  devise  a 
system  of  interpretation  by  which  every  traditional 
custom  could  be  connected  with  some  text  from  the 
Pentateuch,  no  matter  in  how  arbitrary  a  way.  This 
system  was  taken  up  and  perfected  by  his  successors, 
especially  by  Eabbi  Akiba,  who  was  a  prominent  figure 
in  the  revolt  against  Hadrian.^^^^  The  new  method  of  exe- 
gesis laid  weight  upon  the  smallest  word,  and  sometimes 
even  upon  mere  letters  of  Scripture ;  so  that  it  became  a 
matter  of  great  importance  to  the  new  school  of  Eabbins 
to  fix  on  an  authoritative  text.  We  have  seen  that 
when  this  text  was  fixed,  the  discordant  copies  must 
have  been  rigorously  suppressed.  The  evidence  for  this 
is  only  circumstantial,  but  it  is  quite  sufficient.  There 
is  no  other  explanation  which  will  account  for  the  facts, 


76  AQUILA,  LECT.  in. 

and  the  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  what  took  place 
among  the  Greek-speaking  Jews  with  reference  to  their 
Greek  Bible.  The  Bible  of  the  Greek-speaking  Jews, 
the  Septuagint,  had  formerly  enjoyed  very  great  honour 
even  in  Palestine,  and  is  most  respectfully  spoken  of 
by  the  ancient  Palestinian  tradition ;  but  it  did  not  suit 
the  newer  school  of  interpretation,  it  did  not  correspond 
with  the  received  text,  and  was  not  literal  enough  to 
fit  the  new  methods  of  Rabbinic  interpretation,  while 
the  Christians,  on  the  contrary,  found  it  a  convenient 
instrument  in  their  discussions  with  the  Jews.  There- 
fore it  fell  into  disrepute,  and  early  in  the  second  cen- 
tury, just  at  the  time  when,  as  we  have  seen,  the  new 
text  of  the  Old  Testament  had  been  fixed,  we  find  its 
use  superseded  among  the  Greek-speaking  Jews  by  a 
new  translation,  slavishly  literal  in  character,  made  by 
a  Jewish  proselyte  of  the  name  of  Aquila,  wdio  w^as  a 
disciple  of  the  Eabbi  Akiba,  and  studiously  followed 
his  exegetical  methods.  ^^^^ 

This,  then,  Was  what  the  Scribes  did. — They  chose 
for  us  the  Hebrew  text  which  we  have  now  got.  Were 
they  in  a  position  to  choose  the  very  best  text,  to  pro- 
duce a  critical  edition  which  could  justly  be  accepted 
as  the  standard,  so  that  we  lose  nothing  by  the  suppres- 
sion of  all  divergent  copies  ?  Now,  this  at  least  we  can 
say, — that  if  they  fixed  for  us  a  satisfactory  text,  the 
Scribes  did  not  do  so  in  virtue  of  any  great  critical  skill 
which  they  possessed  in  comparing  MSS.  and  selecting 
the  best  readings.     They  worked  from  a  false  point  of 


LECT.  III.  THE  SCRIBES  AS  CRITICS,  77 

view.  Their  objects  were  legal,  not  philological.  Tlieir 
defective  philology,  their  bad  system  of  interpretation, 
made  them  bad  critics ;  for  it  is  the  first  rule  of  criticism 
that  a  good  critic  must  be  a  good  interpreter  of  the 
thoughts  of  his  author.  This  judgment  is  quite  con- 
firmed by  the  accounts  which  are  given  in  the  Tal- 
mudical  books  of  certain  small  and  sporadic  attempts 
made  by  the  Scribes  to  exercise  something  like  criticism 
upon  the  text.  For  example,  in  one  passage  of  the  Tal- 
mud, we  read  of  three  MSS.  preserved  in  the  Court  of  the 
Temple,  each  of  which  had  one  reading  which  the  other 
MSS.  did  not  share.  The  Scribes,  we  are  told,  rejected 
in  each  case  the  reading  which  had  onl}^  one  copy  for 
it  and  two  against  it.^^^^  Now,  every  critic  knows  that  to 
accept  or  reject  a  reading  merely  according  to  the 
number  of  MSS.  for  or  against  it  is  a  method  which,  if 
applied  on  a  large  scale,  would  lead  to  a  very  bad  text 
indeed.  Then  the  early  Scribes  are  related  to  have  made 
certain  changes  in  the  text,  apparently  without  manu- 
script authority,  and  merely  in  order  to  remove  expres- 
sions which  seemed  irreverent  or  indecorous.  We  have 
seen  that  in  later  times,  after  the  received  text  was 
fixed,  the  Jewish  scholars  did  not  venture  to  make  such 
a  change.  They  permitted  themselves  to  make  a  change 
in  the  reading  but  not  a  change  in  the  writing ;  but  in 
earlier  times,  according  to  the  statement  of  the  Eabbi- 
nical  books,  a  certain  small  nuniber  of  alterations, 
chiefly  on  dogmatical  grounds,  was  made  even  upon 
the  writing  of  Scripture.     These  changes  are  called  the 


78  TIKKUNE  SOPHERIM.  lect.  hi. 

iS  Tikhitne  Sopherim  (corrections  or  determinations  of 
the  Scribes).  Thus  in  Job  vii.  20,  where  the  present 
text  reads,  "  I  am  a  burden  to  myself,"  the  tradition  ex- 
plains that  the  original  reading  was,  "  I  am  a  burden 
upon  thee,"  that  is,  a  burden  upon  Jehovah.  That  was 
corrected  because  it  seemed  to  be  a  somewhat  irreverent 
expression.  Again,  in  Genesis  xviii.  22,  where  our  ver- 
sion says,  "  Abraham  still  stood  before  tlie  Lord,"  tradi- 
tion says  that  this  was  a  change  of  the  Scribes,  the 
original  reading  being,  "The  Lord  still  stood  before 
Abraham."  Again,  in  Habakkuk  i.  12,  where  our  ver- 
sion and  the  present  Hebrew  text  read,  "  Art  thou  not 
from  everlasting,  Jehovah  my  God,  my  Holy  One? 
"We  shall  not  die,"  the  tradition  tells  us  that  the  original 
reading  was,  "  Thou  canst  not  die,"  which  was  changed 
because  it  seemed  irreverent  to  mention  the  idea  of 
God  dying,  even  in  order  to  negative  it.  Others  of  the 
eighteen  cases  recorded  in  the  Jewish  books  as  having 
been  corrections  of  the  Scribes  are  more  doubtful,  and  a 
different  explanation  is  more  plausible,  but  on  the  whole 
it  can  hardly  be  questioned  that  the  tradition  expresses 
a  fact,  viz. — That  the  early  guardians  of  the  text  did 
not  hesitate  to  make  small  changes  in  order  to  remove 
expressions  which  they  thought  unedifying.^^*^  ISTo  doubt, 
such  changes  were  made  in  a  good  many  cases  of  which 
no  record  has  been  retained.  For  example,  in  our  text 
of  the  Books  of  Samuel,  Saul's  son  and  successor  is 
called  Ishbosheth,  but  in  1  Chronicles  viii.  33  he  is 
called  Eshbaal.     Eshbaal  means  '*  Baal's  man,"  a  proper 


LECT.  III.  THE  NAME  ISHBOSHETH.  79 

name  of  a  well-known  Semitic  type,  precisely  similar  to 
such  Arabic  names  as  Imrau-1-Cais,  "the  man  of  the 
god  Cais."  We  must  not,  however,  fancy  that  a  son  of 
Saul  could  be  named  after  the  Tyrian  or  Canaanite  Baal. 
The  word  Baal  is  not  the  proper  name  of  one  deity,  but 
an  appellative  noun  meaning  lord  or  owner,  which  the 
tribes  of  the  Northern  Semites  applied  each  to  their  own 
cliief  divinity.  In  earlier  times  it  appears  that  the 
Israelites  did  not  scruple  to  apply  the  title  of  Baal  to 
their  national  God  Jehovah.  Thus  the  golden  calves 
at  Bethel  and  Dan,  which  were  certainly  worshipped 
under  the  supposition  that  they  represented  Jehovah, 
were  called  Baalim  by  their  devotees ;  and  Hosea,  when 
he  prophesies  the  purification  of  Israel's  religion,  makes 
it  a  main  point  that  the  people  shall  no  longer  call 
Jehovah  their  Baal  (Hosea  ii.  16,  17 ;  comf,  xiii.  1,  2). 
This  prophecy  shows  that  in  Hosea's  time  the  use  of 
the  word  was  felt  to  be  dangerous  to  true  religion ;  and 
indeed  there  is  no  question  that  it  led  the  mass  of  the 
people  to  confound  the  true  God  with  the  false  Baalim 
of  Canaan.  And  so  in  process  of  time  scrupulous 
Israelites  not  only  desisted  from  applying  the  title  of 
Baal  to  Jehovah,  and  confined  it  to  the  Tyrian  and 
Canaanite  sun  god,  but  taking  literally  the  precept  of 
Exod.  xxiii.  13,  "  Make  no  mention  of  the  name  of  other 
gods,"  they  were  wont,  when  they  had  occasion  to  refer 
to  the  false  deity,  to  call  him  not  Baal  but  Bosheth,  "  the 
shameful  thing,"  as  a  euphemism  for  the  hated  name 
Tliis  is  how  the  name  of  "Eshbaal"  was  ultimately 


80  AGE  OF  THE  lect.  hi. 

changed  by  scrupulous  copyists  or  readers  into  "  Ishbo- 
sbeth,"  but  we  may  be  very  certain  that  no  king  would 
ever  have  consented  to  bear  such  a  name  in  his  own 
lifetime  as  "  The  man  of  the  shameful  thing." 

These,  then,  are  specimens  of  the  changes  wliich  we 
can  still  prove  to  have  been  made  by  early  editors,  and 
they  are  enough  to  show  that  these  guardians  of  the 
text  were  not  sound  critics.  Fortunately  for  us,  they 
did  not  pretend  to  make  criticism  their  main  business. 
It  would  have  been  a  very  unfortunate  thing  for  us  in- 
deed, if  we  had  been  left  to  depend  upon  a  text  of  the 
Hebrew  Bible  which  the  Scribes  had  made  to  suit  their 
own  views.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  the 
standard  copy  which  they  ultimately  selected,  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  others,  owed  this  distinction  not  to  any 
critical  labour  which  had  been  spent  upon  it,  but  to 
some  external  circumstance  that  gave  it  a  special  repu- 
tation. Indeed,  the  fact,  which  we  have  already  referred 
to,  that  the  very  errors  and  corrections  and  accidental 
peculiarities  of  the  MS.  were  kept  just  as  they  stood, 
shows  that  it  must  have  been  invested  with  a  peculiar 
sanctity ;  if  indeed  the  meaning  of  the  so-called  extra- 
ordinary points — that  is,  of  those  suspended  and  dotted 
letters,  and  the  like — had  not  already  been  forgotten 
when  it  was  chosen  to  be  the  archetype  of  all  future 
copies. 

Now,  if  the  Scribes  were  not  the  men  to  make  a 
critical  text,  it  is  plain  that  they  were  also  not  in  a 
position  to  choose,  upon  scientific  principles,  the  very 


LECT.  III.  ARCHETYPE.  81 

best  extant  MS. ;  but  it  is  very  probable  that  they 
selected  an  old  and  well-written  copy,  possibly  one  of 
those  MSS.  which  were  preserved  in  the  Court  of  the 
Temple.  Between  this  copy  and  the  original  auto- 
graphs of  the  Sacred  Writers  there  must  have  been 
many  a  link.  It  may  have  been  an  old  manuscript,  but 
it  was  not  an  exorbitantly  old  one.  Of  that  there  are 
two  proofs.  In  the  first  place,  it  was  certainly  written 
with  the  "  square  "  or  "  Chaldean "  letters  used  in  our 
modern  Hebrew  Bibles  ;  but  these  letters  are  of  Aramaic 
origin,  and  in  old  times  the  Hebrews  used  the  quite  dif- 
ferent character  called  Phoenician.  According  to  Jewish 
tradition,  which  ascribes  everything  to  Ezra  which  it  has 
not  the  assurance  to  refer  to  Moses,  the  change  on  the 
character  in  which  the  sacred  books  were  written  was 
introduced  by  Ezra  ;  but  we  know  that  this  is  a  mistake, 
for  the  Samaritans,  who  did  not  possess  the  Pentateuch 
until  fifty  years  after  Ezra,  received  it  in  the  old 
Phoenician  letter,  which  they  retain  in  a  corrupted  form 
down  to  the  present  day.  It  is  very  doubtful  whether 
there  were  any  MSS.  written  in  the  Aramaic  character 
before  the  third  century  B.C.,  and  that  therefore  would 
be  the  earliest  date  to  which  we  can  refer  the  archetype 
of  our  present  Hebrew  copies.  Another  proof  that  the 
copy  was  not  extraordinarily  old  lies  in  the  spelling. 
In  Hebrew,  as  in  other  languages,  the  rules  of  spelling 
varied  in  the  course  of  centuries,  and  it  is  not  impos- 
sible to  say  which  of  two  orthographies  is  the  older. 
Now,  it  can  be  proved  that  the  copies  which  lay  before 


82  DESTRUCTION  OF  BIBLES  lect.  hi. 

the  translators  of  the  Septuagint  in  the  third,  and  per- 
haps in  the  second,  century  B.C.,  often  had  an  older  style 
of  spelling  than  existed  in  the  archetype  of  our  present 
Hebrew  Bibles.  ^^^-^  It  does  not  follow  of  necessity  that 
those  older  MSS.  were  also  better  and  nearer  to  the 
original  text;  but  certainly  the  facts  which  we  have 
been  developing  give  a  new  importance  to  the  circum- 
stance that  the  MSS.  of  the  LXX.  often  contained 
readings  very  different  from  those  of  our  Hebrew^  Bibles, 
even  to  the  extent  of  omitting  or  inserting  passages  of 
considerable  length. 

In  this  connection  there  is  yet  another  point  worth 
notice.  In  these  times  Hebrew  books  were  costly  and 
cumbrous,  written  on  huge  rolls  of  leather,  not  even 
on  the  later  and  more  convenient  parchment.  Copies 
therefore  were  not  very  numerous,  and,  being  much 
handled,  were  apt  to  get  worn  and  indistinct.  For  not 
only  was  leather  an  indifferent  surface  to  write  on,  but 
the  ink  was  of  a  kind  that  could  be  washed  off,  a  preju- 
dice existing  against  the  use  of  a  mordant.  ^^^^  No  single 
copy  therefore,  however  excellent,  was  likely  to  remain 
long  in  good  readable  condition  throughout.  And  we 
have  seen  that  collation  of  several  copies,  by  which 
defects  might  have  been  supplied,  was  practised  to  but 
a  small  extent.  Often  indeed  it  must  have  been  diffi- 
cult to  get  copies  to  collate,  and  once  at  least  the  whole 
number  of  Bibles  existing  in  Palestine  was  reduced  to 
very  narrow  limits.  For  Antiochus  Epiphanes  (b.c. 
]  G8)  caused  all  MSS.  of  the  Law,  and  seemingly  of  the 


LECT.  III.  BY  ANTIOCHUS,  83 

other  sacred  books,  to  be  torn  up  and  burnt,  and  made 
it  a  capital  offence  to  possess  a  Pentateuch  (1  Mac.  i. 
56,  57 ;  Josephus,  Ant.  xii.  5).  The  text  of  books  pre- 
served only  in  manuscript  might  very  readily  suffer  in 
passing  through  such  a  crisis,  and  it  is  most  providential 
that  the  Septuagint  version,  translated  at  an  earlier 
period  and  current  in  regions  where  Antiochus  had  no 
sway,  stiU  exists  to  carry  our  knowledge  of  the  state  of 
the  text  back  beyond  his  time,  confirming  the  substan- 
tial accuracy  of  our  Hebrew  Bibles,  while  at  the  same 
time  it  shows  them  to  be  not  immaculate,  and  gives 
valuable  help  towards  the  correction  of  such  errors 
as  exist. 


84  THE  SEPTUAGINT.  lect.  iv. 


LECTUEE    lY. 

THE   SEPTUAGINt/^^ 

We  have  passed  under  review  the  vicissitudes  of  the 
Hebrew  Text,  as  far  back  as  the  days  of  Antiochus 
Epiphanes.  We  have  found  that  the  absence  of  im- 
portant various  readings  from  the  Hebrew  MSS.  now 
in  existence  does  not  prove  that  the  text  which  they 
present  is  absolutely  perfect  and  authoritative.  The 
phenomena  of  the  text  prove,  indeed,  that  all  our  MSS. 
go  back  to  one  archetype.  But  the  archetype  was  not 
formed  by  a  critical  process  which  we  can  accept  as 
conclusive.  It  was  not  so  ancient  but  that  a  long 
interval  lay  between  it  and  the  first  hand  of  the  Bibli- 
cal authors ;  and  the  comparative  paucity  of  books  in 
those  early  times,  combined  with  the  imperfect  mate- 
rials used  in  writing,  and  the  deliberate  attempt  of 
Antiochus  to  annihilate  the  Hebrew  Bible,  exposed  the 
text  to  so  many  dangers  that  it  cannot  but  appear  a 
most  welcome  and  providential  circumstance  that  the 
Greek  translation,  derived  from  MSS.  of  which  some  at 
least  were  presumably  older  than  the  archetype  of  our 
present  Hebrew  copies,  and  preserved  in  countries 
beyond  the  dominions  of  Antiochus,  offers  an  independ- 


LECT.  IV.  KEIL.  85 

ent  witness  as  to  the  early  state  of  the  Biblical  books, 

vindicating  the  substantial  accuracy  of  the  transmission 

of  these  records ;  while,  at  the  same  time,  it  displays 

a  text  not  yet  fixed  in  every  point  of  detail,  exhibits  a 

series  of  important  various   readings,   and  sometimes 

indicates  the  existence  of  corruptions  in  the  received 

Hebrew    recension — corruptions  which   it  not  seldom 

enables  us  to  remove,  restoring  the  first  hand  of  the 

sacred  authors. 

Nevertheless,  there  have  been  many  scholars  who 

altogether  reject  this  use  of  the  Septuagint.     One  of 

the  few  living   representatives  of  this  party  is  Keil, 

from  whose  Introduction  (Eng.  Trans.,  vol.  ii.  p.  306) 

I  quote  the  following  sentences : — 

"  The  numerous  and  strongly  marked  deviations  [of  the  Sep- 
tuagint] from  the  Massoretic  text  have  arisen  partly  at  a  later 
time,  out  of  the  carelessness  and  caprice  of  transcribers.  But  in 
so  far  as  they  existed  originally,  almost  in  a  mass  they  are 
explained  by  the  uncritical  and  wanton  passion  for  emendation, 
which  led  the  translators  to  alter  the  original  text  (by  omissions, 
additions,  and  transpositions)  where  they  misunderstood  it  in 
consequence  of  their  own  defective  knowledge  of  the  language, 
or  where  they  supposed  it  to  be  unsuitable  or  incorrect  for 
historical,  chronological,  dogmatic,  or  other  reasons ;  or  which, 
at  least,  led  them  to  render  it  inexactly,  according  to  their  own 
notions  and  their  uncertain  conjectures." 

If  this  judgment  w^ere  sound,  we  should  be  deprived 
at  one  blow  of  the  most  ancient  witness  to  the  state  of 
the  text ;  and  certainly,  at  one  time,  the  opinion  advo- 
cated by  Keil  was  generally  current  among  Protestant 
scholars.  We  have  glanced,  in  a  previous  Lecture 
{sujpra,  p.  43),  at  the  reasons  which  led  the  early  Pro- 
5 


8G  MORINUS  AND  lect.  iv. 

testants  to  place  themselves,  on  points  of  Hebrew 
scholarship,  almost  without  reserve  in  the  hands  of  the 
Jews.  They  accepted  the  received  Hebrew  text  as 
transmitted  in  the  Jewish  schools,  and  they  naturally 
viewed  with  distrust  the  very  different  text  of  the 
Septuagint.  However,  the  question  of  the  real  value  of 
the  Greek  version  was  stirred  early  in  the  seventeenth 
century  mainly  by  two  French  scholars,  one  of  whom 
was  a  Catholic,  John  Morinus,  priest  of  the  Oratory,  the 
other  a  Protestant,  Ludovicus  Cappellus. 

The  controversy  raised  by  the  publication  of  the 
Exerdtationes  BiUicce  of  Morinus  (Paris,  1633)  was 
unduly  prolonged  by  the  introduction  of  dogmatic 
considerations  which  should  have  had  no  place  in  a 
scholarly  argument  as  to  the  history  of  the  Biblical 
text.  These  considerations  lost  much  of  their  force 
when  all  parties  were  compelled  to  admit  the  value  of 
the  various  readings  of  MSS.  and  versions  for  the  study 
of  the  New  Testament ;  and,  since  theological  prejudice 
was  overcome,  it  has  gradually  become  clear  to  the  vast 
majority  of  conscientious  students  that  the  Septuagint 
is  really  of  the  greatest  value  as  a  witness  to  the  early 
state  of  the  text. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  convey,  in  a  popular  manner, 
a  sufficiently  clear  idea  of  the  arguments  by  which  this 
position  is  established.  Even  the  few  remarks  which  I 
shall  make  may,  I  fear,  seem  to  you  somewhat  tedious  ; 
but  I  must  ask  your  attention  for  them,  because  it  is 
not  a  slight  matter  to  inquire  whether,  in  tliis  version. 


LECT.  IV.  CAPPELLUS.  87 

older  than  tlie  time  of  Antioclius  Epiphanes,  we  have  or 
have  not  a  valuable  testimony  to  the  way  in  which  the 
Old  Testament  has  been  transmitted,  an  independent 
basis  for  a  rational  and  well-argued  belief  in  the  general 
soundness  of  the  Hebrew  text,  and  a  measure  of  the 
degree  of  uncertainty  which  affects  its  readings  in 
detail. 

In  judging  of  the  Septuagint  translation,  we  must 
not  put  ourselves  on  the  standpoint  of  a  translator  in 
these  days.  We  must  begin  by  realising  to  ourselves 
the  facts  brought  out  in  Lecture  II.,  that  Jewish 
scholars,  before  the  time  of  Christ,  had  no  grammar 
and  no  dictionary  ;  that  all  their  knowledge  of  the 
language  w^as  acquired  by  oral  teaching;  that  their 
exegesis  of  difficult  passages  was  necessarily  traditional; 
and  that,  where  tradition  failed  them,  they  had  for 
their  guidance  only  that  kind  of  practical  knowledge  of 
the  language  which  they  got  by  the  constant  habit  of 
reading  the  sacred  text,  and  speaking  some  kind  of 
Hebrew  among  themselves  in  the  schools.  We  must 
also  remember  that,  when  the  Septuagint  was  composed, 
the  Hebrew  language  was  either  dead  or  dying,  and 
that  the  mother -tongue  of  the  translators  was  either 
Greek  or  Aramaic.  It  seems,  indeed,  that  the  work  was 
done  by  persons  who  knew  both  Aramaic  and  Greek. 
In  consequence  of  this,  we  must  not  be  surprised  to 
find  that,  when  tradition  was  silent,  the  Septuagint 
translators  made  many  mistakes.  If  they  came  to  a 
difficult  passage,  say  of  a  prophet,  of  which  no  tradi- 


88  METHODS  OF  THE  lect.  iv. 

tional  interpretation  had  been  handed  down  in  the 
schools,  or  which  contained  w^ords  the  meanings  of 
which  had  not  been  taught  to  them  by  their  masters, 
they  could  do  nothing  better  than  make  a  guess, — some- 
times guided  by  analogies  and  similar  words  in  the 
Aramaic,  sometimes  perhaps  by  the  Arabic,  sometimes 
by  other  considerations.  The  value  of  the  translation 
does  not  lie  in  the  sense  which  they  put  upon  such 
passages,  but  in  the  evidence  that  we  can  find  as  to 
what  Hebrew  w^ords  lay  in  the  MSS.  before  them. 

Now,  apart  from  the  natural  limitation  of  scholar- 
ship derived  entirely  from  tradition,  we  find  that  the 
Septuagint  sometimes  varies  from  the  older  text  for 
reasons  which  are  at  once  intelligible  when  we  under- 
stand the  general  principles  of  the  Scribes  at  the  time. 
We  have  already  seen,  for  example,  that  the  Scribes  in 
Palestine  did  not  hesitate  occasionally  to  make  a  dog- 
matic correction,  removing  from  the  writing,  or  at  least 
from  the  reading,  of  Scripture  some  expression  which 
they  thought  it  indecorous  to  pronounce  in  public.  We 
need  not,  therefore,  be  surprised  to  find,  and  indeed  we 
do  find,  that  the  translators  of  the  Septuagint  did  the 
same  thing,  and  that  they  sometimes  changed  a  phrase 
which  they  thought  likely  to  be  misunderstood,  or  to  be 
used  to  establish  some  false  doctrine.  Thus,  in  Exodus 
xxiv.  10,  the  Hebrew  text  reads,  "  And  they  (that  is, 
the  leaders  of  Israel  who  went  up  towards  Sinai  with 
Moses)  saw  the  God  of  Israel."  This  anthropomorphic 
expression,  it  was  felt,  could  not  be  rendered  literally 


LECT.  IV.  LXX.  TRANSLATORS.  89 

without  lending  some  countenance  to  the  false  idea  that 
the  spiritual  God  can  be  seen  by  the  bodily  eyes  of 
men,  and  offering  an  apparent  contradiction  to  Exodus 
xxxiii.  20.  The  Septuagint  therefore  changes  it,  and 
says,  "  They  saw  the  place  where  the  God  of  Israel  had 
stood." 

Again,  we  have  already  seen  that  the  interpretation 
of  the  Scribes  was  largely  guided  by  the  Halacha,  that 
is,  by  oral  tradition  ultimately  based  upon  the  common 
law  and  habitual  usage  of  the  sanctuary  and  of  Jerusa- 
lem. The  same  influence  of  the  Halacha  is  found  in 
the  Septuagint  translation.  Thus,  in  Lev.  xxiv.  7, 
where  the  Hebrew  text  bids  frankincense  be  placed  on 
the  shewbread,  the  Septuagint  makes  it  "  frankincense 
and  salt,"  because  salt,  as  well  as  frankincense,  was 
used  in  the  actual  ritual  of  their  period. 

Such  de%dations  of  the  Septuagint  as  these  need 
not  seriously  embarrass  the  critic.  He  recognises  the 
causes  from  which  they  came.  He  is  able  to  estimate 
their  extent  approximately  by  what  he  knows  of 
Palestinian  tradition,  and  he  is  not  likely,  in  a  case  of 
this  sort,  to  be  misled  into  the  supposition  that  the 
Septuagint  had  a  different  text  from  the  Hebrew.  Once 
more,  we  find  that  the  translators  allowed  themselves 
certain  liberties  which  were  also  used  by  copyists  of  the 
time.  Their  object  was  to  give  the  thing  Tvdth  perfect 
clearness  where  they  understood  it.  Consequently  they 
sometimes  changed  a  "he"  into  "David"  or  "Solomon," 
or  whoever  the  person  might  be  who  was  alluded  to ;  and 


90  VARIATIONS  lect.  iv. 

they  had  no  scruple  in  adding  a  word  or  two  to  com- 
plete the  sense  of  an  obscure  sentence,  or  supply  what 
appeared  to  be  an  ellipsis.  Even  our  extant  Hebrew 
MSS.  indicate  a  tendency  to  make  additions  of  this 
description.  The  original  and  nervous  style  of  early 
Hebrew  prose  was  no  longer  appreciated,  and  a  diffuse 
smoothness,  with  constant  repetition  of  standing  phrases 
and  elaborate  expansion  of  the  most  trifling  incidents, 
was  the  classical  ideal  of  composition.  The  copyist  or 
translator  seldom  omitted  anything  save  by  accident; 
but  he  was  often  tempted  by  his  notions  of  style  to 
venture  on  an  expansion  of  the  text.  Let  me  take  a 
single  example.  In  passages  in  the  Old  Testament 
where  we  read  of  some  one  eating,  a  compassionate 
editor,  as  a  recent  critic  humorously  puts  it,  was  pretty 
sure  to  intervene  and  give  him  somethmg  to  drink. 
Sometimes  we  find  the  full  reading  in  the  Septuagint, 
sometimes  in  the  Hebrew  text.  In  1  Samuel  i.  9  the 
Hebrew  tells  us  that  Hannah  rose  up  after  she  had 
eaten  in  Shiloh  and  after  she  had  drunk,  but  the  Sep- 
tuagint has  only  the  shorter  reading,  "After  she  had 
eaten."  Conversely,  in  2  Samuel  xii.  21,  where  the 
Hebrew  text  says  only,  "  Thou  didst  rise  and  eat  bread," 
the  Septuagint  presents  the  fuller  text,  "Thou  didst 
rise  and  eat  bread,  and  drink."  In  cases  of  this  sort,  the 
shorter  text  is  obviously  the  original.  There  was  no 
motive  for  leaving  out  the  drinking,  but  a  copyist  who 
loved  completeness  of  statement  naturally  understood 
that  a  man  would  not  eat  without  drinking  likewise. 


LECT.  IV.  OF  THE  LXX.  91 

We  must,  tlien,  put  aside  for  our  present  purpose 
these  tliree  classes  of  variations.  We  have  to  put  aside 
the  cases  where  the  translators  misunderstood  the  text, 
and  could  not  but  misunderstand  it  because  they  had 
no  tradition  to  guide  them.  We  must  not  say  that  they 
were  ignorant  or  capricious,  because  they  were  not  able 
to  make  a  good  grammatical  translation  of  a  passage  at 
a  time  when  such  a  thing  as  grammar  did  not  exist  even 
in  Palestine. 

In  the  next  place,  we  must  put  on  one  side  the 
cases  where  their  interpretation  was  influenced  by 
exegetical  considerations  derived  from  the  dogmatic 
theology  of  their  time  or  from  the  traditional  law.  And, 
thirdly,  we  can  attach  no  great  importance  to  those 
variations  in  which,  without  changing  the  sense,  the 
translator,  or  perhaps  a  copyist  before  him,  gave  a  slight 
turn  to  an  expression  to  remove  ambiguity,  or  gain  the 
diffuse  fulness  which  he  loved. 

But  after  making  every  allowance  for  these  cases  a 
large  class  of  passages  remains,  in  which  the  Septuagint 
presents  important  variations  from  the  Massoretic  text. 
The  test  by  which  the  value  of  these  variations  can  be 
determined  is  the  method  of  retranslation.  A  faithful 
translation  from  Hebrew  into  an  idiom  so  different  as 
the  Greek  cannot  fail  to  retain  the  stamp  of  the  original 
language.  It  will  be  comparatively  easy  to  put  it  back 
into  idiomatic  Hebrew,  and  even  the  mistakes  of  the 
ti-anslator  will  often  point  clearly  to  the  words  of  the 
original   which  he   had  before   him.      But  where  the 


92  VARIOUS  READINGS  lect.  iv. 

translator  capriciously  departs  from  his  original,  the 
work  of  retranslation  will  at  once  become  more  difficult. 
For  the  capricious  translator  is  one  who  substitutes  his 
own  thought  for  that  of  the  author,  and  what  he  thinks 
in  Greek  will  not  so  naturally  lend  itself  to  retroversion 
into  the  Hebrew  idiom.  The  test  of  retranslation  gives 
a  very  favourable  impression  of  the  fidelity  of  the  Alex- 
andrian version.  With  a  little  practice  one  can  often 
put  back  whole  chapters  of  the  Septuagint  into  Hebrew, 
reproducing  the  original  text  almost  word  for  word. 
The  translation  is  not  of  equal  merit  throughout,  and  it 
is  plain  that  different  parts  of  the  Bible  were  rendered 
into  Greek  by  men  of  varying  capacity ;  but  in  general, 
and  under  the  limitations  already  indicated,  it  is  safe 
to  say  that  the  translators  were  men  of  competent  scho- 
larship as  scholarship  then  went,  and  that  they  did 
their  work  faithfully  and  in  no  arbitrary  way.  IS'ow  as 
we  proceed  with  the  work  of  retranslation,  and  when  all 
has  gone  on  smoothly  for  perhaps  a  whole  chapter,  in 
which  we  find  no  considerable  deflection  from  the  pre- 
sent Hebrew,  we  suddenly  come  to  something  which  the 
practised  hand  has  no  difficulty  in  putting  back  into 
Hebrew,  which  indeed  is  full  of  such  characteristic 
Hebrew  idiom  that  it  is  impossible  to  ascribe  it  to  the 
caprice  of  a  translator  thinking  in  Greek,  but  which, 
nevertheless,  diverges  from  the  Massoretic  text.  In 
such  cases  we  can  be  morally  certain  that  a  various 
reading  existed  in  the  Hebrew  MS.  from  which  the 
Septuagint  was  derived.     Nay,  in  some  passages,  the 


LECT.  IV.  OF  THE  LXX.  93 

moral  certainty  becomes  demonstrative,  for  we  find  tliat 
the  translator  stumbled  on  a  word  which  he  was  unable 
to  render  into  Greek,  and  that  he  contented  himself 
with  transcribing  it  in  Greek  letters.     A  Hebrew  word 
thus  bodily  transferred  to  the  pages  of  the  Septuagint, 
and  yet  differing  from  what  we  now  read  in  our  Hebrew 
Bibles,  constitutes  a  various  reading  which  cannot  be 
explained  away.     An  example  of  this  is  found  in  1  Sam. 
XX.,  in  the  account  of  the  arrangement  made  between 
Jonathan  and  David   to  determine  the   real   state  of 
Saul's  disposition  towards  the  latter.     In  the  Hebrew 
text  (ver.  19)  Jonathan  directs  David  to  be  in  hiding 
"by  the  stone  Ezel;"  and  at  verse  41,  when  the  plan 
agreed  on  has  been  carried  out,  David  at  a  given  signal 
emerges  "from  beside  the  Negeb."     The  Negeb  is  a 
district  in  the  south  of  Judea,  remote  from  the  city  of 
Saul,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  which  the  events  of  our 
chapter  took  place;  and  the  attempt  of  the  English 
version  to  smooth  aw^ay  the  difficulty  is  not  satisfactory 
either  in  point  of  grammar  or  of  sense.     But  the  Sep- 
tuagint makes  the  whole  thing  clear.     At  verse  19  the 
Greek  reads  "beside  yonder  Ergab,"  and  at  verse  41 
"  David  arose  from  the  Ergab."     Ergab  is  the  transcrip- 
tion in  Greek  of  a  rare  Hebrew  word  signifying  a  cairn 
or  rude  monument  of  stone,  which  does  not  occur  else- 
where except  as  a  proper  name  (Argob).     The  trans- 
lators transcribed  the  word  because  they  did  not  under- 
stand it,  and  the  reading  of  the  Massoretic  text,  which 
involves  no  considerable  change  in  the  letters  of  the 


94  VARIOUS  READINGS  lect.  iv. 

Hebrew,  probably  arose  from  similar  lack  of  knowledge 
on  the  part  of  Palestinian  scholars. 

The  various  readings  of  the  Septuagint  are  not  always 
so  happy  as  in  this  case ;  but  in  selecting  some  further 
examples,  it  will  be  most  instructive  for  us  to  confine  our- 
selves to  passages  where  the  Greek  gives  a  better  reading 
than  the  Hebrew,  and  where  its  superiority  can  be  made 
tolerably  manifest  even  in  an  English  rendering.  It  must, 
however,  be  remembered  that  complete  proof  that  the 
corruption  lies  on  the  side  of  the  Hebrew  and  not  of  the 
Greek  can  be  offered  only  to  those  who  understand  these 
languages.     Our  first  example  shall  be  1  Sam.  xiv.  18. 

Hebrew.  Septuagint. 

And    Saul    said    to    Ahiah,  And    Saul    said    to    Ahiah, 

Bring  hither  the  ark  of  God.  Bring   hither  the    ephod,    for 

For  the  ark  of  God  was   on  he  bare  the  ephod  on  that  day 

that    day  and    [not   as  E.    V.  before  Israel, 
with]  the  children  of  Israel. 

The  Authorised  Version  smooths  away  one  difficulty 
of  the  Hebrew  Text  at  the  expense  of  grammar.  But 
there  are  other  difficulties  behind.  The  ark  was  then 
at  Gibeah  of  Kirjath-jearim  (1  Sam.  vii.  1 ;  2  Sam.  vi.  3), 
quite  a  different  place  from  Gibeah  of  Benjamin ;  and 
its  priest  was  not  Ahiah,  but  Eleazar  ben  Abinadab. 
Besides,  Saul's  object  was  to  seek  an  oracle,  and  this 
was  done,  not  by  means  of  the  ark,  but  by  the  sacred  lot 
connected  with  the  ephod  of  the  priest  (1  Sam.  xxiii.  6, 9). 
This  is  what  the  Septuagint  actually  has  got,  and  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  it  is  the  right  reading.  The 
changes  on  the  Hebrew  letters  required  to  get  the  one 


LECT.    IV. 


IN  SAMUEL, 


95 


reading  out  of  the  other  are  far  less  considerable  than 
one  would  imagine  from  the  English. 

Another  example  is  the  death  of  Ishbosheth  (2  Sam. 
iv.  5,  6,  7) :— 


Septuagint. 
They  came  to  the  house  of 
Ishbosheth  in  the  hottest  part 
of  the  day,  while  he  was  taking 
his  midday  siesta.  And  lo,  the 
woman  who  kept  the  door  of 
the  house  was  cleaning  wheat, 
and  she  slumbered  and  slept, 
and  the  brothers  Kechab  and 
Baanah  got  through  unobserved 
and  came  into  the  house  as 
Ishbosheth  lay  on  his  bed,  etc. 


Hebrew. 
[The  assassins]  came  to  the 
house  of  Ishbosheth  in  the 
hottest  part  of  the  day,  while 
he  was  taking  his  midday  siesta. 
(6)  And  hither  they  came  into 
the  midst  of  the  house  fetching 
wheat,  and  smote  him  in  the 
fiauk,  and  Rechab  and  Baanah 
his  brother  escaped.  (7)  And 
they  came  into  the  house  as  he 
lay  on  his  bed,  .  .  .  and  smote 
him  and  slew  him,  etc. 

In  the  Hebrew  there  is  a  meaningless  repetition  m 
verse  7  of  what  has  already  been  fully  explained  in  the 
two  preceding  verses.  The  Septuagint  text  gives  a  clear 
and  progressive  narrative,  and  one  which  no  "  capricious 
translator"  could  have  derived  out  of  his  own  head.  As 
in  the  previous  case,  the  two  readings  are  very  like  one 
another  in  the  Hebrew  letter. 

Another  reading,  long  ago  appealed  to  by  Dathe  as 
one  which  no  man  familiar  with  the  style  of  the  trans- 
lator could  credit  him  with  inventing,  is  found  in 
Ahithophel's  advice  to  Absalom  (2  Sam.  xvii.  3) : — 

Septuagint. 
I  will  make  all  the  people 
turn  to  thee  as  a  bride  turneth 


Hebrew. 
I  will  bring  back  all  the 
people  to  thee.  Like  the  re- 
turn of  the  whole  is  the  man 
whom  thou  seekest.  All  the 
people  shall  have  peace. 


to  her  husband.  Thou  seekest 
the  life  of  but  one  man,  and 
all  the  people  shall  have  peace. 


96  VARIOUS  READINGS  lect.  iv. 

The  cumbrousness  of  the  Hebrew  text  is  manifest.  The 
Septuagint,  on  the  contrary,  introduces  a  graceful  simile, 
thoroughly  natural  in  the  picturesque  and  poetically- 
coloured  language  of  ancient  Israel,  but  wholly  unlike 
the  style  of  the  prosaic  age  when  the  translator  worked. 
You  will  observe  that  the  examples  which  I  have 
selected  are  all  from  the  Books  of  Samuel,  and  this  has  a 
reason.  In  some  parts  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  notably 
in  Samuel  and  other  early  historical  books,  variations  of 
the  kind  which  I  have  illustrated  are  numerous;  and  there 
is  often  reason  to  conclude  that  the  true  reading  is  pre- 
served in  the  Septuagint,  or,  at  least,  can  be  reached  with 
its  aid.  In  other  books,  and  particularly  in  the  greater 
part  of  the  Pentateuch,  the  Septuagint  deflects  but  little 
from  the  Hebrew  text,  and  its  variations  seldom  give  a 
better  reading.  This  is  just  what  we  should  expect,  for 
from  a  very  early  date  the  Pentateuch  was  read  in  the 
synagogues  every  Sabbath  day  (Acts  xv.  21)  in  regular 
course,  the  whole  being  gone  through  in  a  cycle  of  three 
years.  The  Jews  thus  became  so  familiar  with  the  words 
of  the  Pentateuch  that  copyists  were  in  great  measure 
secured  from  important  errors  of  transcription ;  and  it  is 
also  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  rolls  written  for  the 
synagogue  were  transcribed  with  special  care  long  before 
the  full  development  of  the  elaborate  precautions  which 
were  ultimately  devised  to  exclude  errors.  Sections 
from  the  prophetic  books  were  also  read  in  the  syna- 
gogue (Acts  xiii.  15),  but  not  in  a  complete  and  system- 
atic manner.     At  the  time  of  Christ,  indeed,  it  would 


LECT.  IV.  IN  SAMUEL.  97 

seem  that  the  reader  had  a  certain  freedom  of  choice  in 
the  prophetic  lessons  (Luke  iv.  17).  Such  books  as 
Samuel  had  little  place  in  the  synagogue  service,  but 
the  interest  of  the  narrative  caused  them  to  be  largely 
read  in  private.  This  use  of  the  books  gave  no  such 
guarantee  against  the  introduction  of  various  readings 
as  was  afforded  by  use  in  public  worship.  Private 
readers  must  no  doubt  have  often  been  content  to  pur- 
chase or  transcribe  indifferent  copies,  and  a  student 
might  not  hesitate  to  make  on  his  own  copy  notes  or 
small  additions  to  facihtate  the  sense,  or  even  to  add  a 
paragraph  which  he  had  derived  from  another  source,  a 
procedure  of  which  we  shall  find  examples  by  and  by. 
Under  such  circumstances,  and  in  the  absence  of  official 
supervision,  the  multiplication  of  copies  opened  an  easy 
door  to  the  multiplication  of  errors ;  which  might,  no 
doubt,  have  been  again  eliminated  by  a  critical  collation, 
but  might  very  easily  become  permanent  when,  as  we 
have  seen,  a  single  copy  without  critical  revision  acquired 
the  position  of  the  standard  manuscript,  to  which  all 
new  transcripts  were  to  be  conformed. 

In  general,  then,  we  must  conclude,  first,  that  many 
various  readings  once  existed  in  MSS.  of  the  Old 
Testament  which  have  totally  disappeared  from  the 
extant  Hebrew  copies ;  and,  further,  that  the  range  and 
distribution  of  these  variations  were  in  part  connected 
with  the  fact  that  all  books  of  the  Old  Testament  had 
not  an  equal  place  in  the  official  service  of  the  syna- 
gogue.   But  the  force  of  these  observations  is  sometimes 


98  ORIGIN 


met  by  an  argument  directed  to  depreciate  the  value 
of  the  Septuagint  readings.  It  is  not  denied  that 
the  MSS.  which  lay  before  the  Greek  translators 
contained  various  readings ;  but  it  is  urged  that  these 
]\ISS.  were  presumably  of  Egyptian  origin,  and  that 
the  Jews  of  Egypt  had  probably  to  content  them- 
selves with  inferior  copies,  transmitted  and  multiplied 
in  the  hands  of  scholars  who  were  neither  so  learned 
nor  so  scrupulous  as  the  Scribes  of  Jerusalem.  Upon 
this  view  we  are  invited  to  look  upon  the  Septuagint  as 
the  witness  to  a  corrupt  Egyptian  recension  of  the  text, 
the  various  readings  in  which  deserve  little  attention, 
and  afford  no  evidence  that  Palestinian  MSS.  did  not 
agree  even  at  an  early  period  with  the  present  Mas- 
soretic  text. 

Now,  we  have  already  seen  that  this  view  is  at  any 
rate  exaggerated,  for  we  have  had  cases  before  us  in 
which  no  sober  critic  will  hesitate  to  prefer  the  so-called 
Egyptian  reading.  But  it  is  to  be  observed  further  that 
the  whole  theory  of  a  uniform  Palestinian  recension  is  a 
pure  hypothesis.  There  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence 
that  there  was  a  uniform  Palestinian  text  in  the  sense 
in  which  our  present  Hebrew  Bibles  are  uniform — or, 
in  other  words,  to  the  exclusion  even  of  such  variations 
and  corruptions  as  are  found  in  MSS.  of  the  New 
Testament — before  the  first  century  of  our  era.  Nay, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  author  of  the  Booh  of  Juhilees, 
a  Palestinian  scholar  of  the  first  century,  used  a 
Hebrew  Bible  which  often  agreed  with  the  Septuagint 


LECT.  IV.  OF  THE  LXX.  99 

or  the  Samaritan  recension  against  the  Massoretic  text 
(supra,  p.  73). 

But  let  us  look  at  the  history  of  the  Greek  transla- 
tion, and  see  what  ground  of  fact  there  is  for  supposing 
that  it  was  made  from  inferior  copies,  and  could  pass 
muster  only  in  a  land  of  inferior  scholarship.  The 
account  of  the  origin  of  the  Septuagint  which  was  cur- 
rent in  the  time  of  Christ,  and  may  be  read  in  Josephus 
and  Eusebius,  is  full  of  fabulous  embellishments,  designed 
to  establish  the  authority  of  the  version  as  mii-aculously 
composed  under  divine  inspiration.  The  source  of  these 
fables  is  an  epistle  purporting  to  be  written  by  one 
Aristeas,  a  courtier  in  Alexandria  under  Ptolemy  Phila- 
delphus.^^^  This  epistle  is  a  forgery,  but  the  author  seems 
to  have  linked  on  his  fabulous  stories  to  some  element 
of  current  tradition;  and  there  is  other  e^ddence  that 
in  the  second  century  B.C.  the  uniform  tradition  of 
the  Jews  in  Egypt  was  to  the  effect  that  the  Greek 
Pentateuch  was  written  for  the  first  or  second  Ptolemy, 
to  be  placed  in  the  royal  library  collected  by  Demetrius 
Phalereus.  This  tradition  is  not  w^hoUy  improbable, 
and  at  all  events  the  date  to  which  it  leads  us  has 
generally  commended  itself  to  the  judgment  of  scholars. 
That  is,  the  Pentateuch  was  translated  in  Egypt  j 
before  the  middle  of  the  third  century  B.C.  The/ 
other  books  were  translated  later,  but  they  probably 
followed  pretty  fast.  The  author  of  the  prologue  to  the 
Apocryphal  book  of  Ecclesiasticus,  who  wrote  in  Egypt 
about  130  B.C.,  speaks  of  the  law,  the  prophets,  and  the 


100  HELLENISTS  lect.  iv. 

other  books  of  the  fathers,  as  current  in  Greek  in  his 
time.  The  Septuagint  version,  then,  was  made  in  Egypt 
under  the  Ptolemies.  Under  these  princes  the  Jewish 
colony  in  Egypt  was  not  a  poor  or  oppressed  body; 
it  was  very  numerous,  very  influential.  Jews  held 
important  posts  in  the  kingdom,  and  formed  a  large 
element  in  the  population  of  Alexandria.  Their  wealth 
was  so  great  that  they  were  able  to  make  frequent  pil- 
grimages and  send  many  rich  gifts  to  the  Temple  at 
Jerusalem.  They  stood,  therefore,  on  an  excellent  foot- 
ing with  the  authorities  of  the  nation  in  Palestine,  and 
there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  that  they  were 
regarded  as  heretics,  using  an  inferior  Bible,  or  in  any 
way  falling  short  of  all  the  requisites  of  true  Judaism. 
There  was,  indeed,  a  schismatic  tample  in  Egypt,  at 
Leontopolis ;  but  that  temple,  so  far  as  we  can  gather, 
by  no  means  attracted  to  it  the  service  and  the  worship 
of  the  greater  part  of  the  Greek-speaking  Jews  in  Egypt. 
Their  hearts  still  turned  towards  Jerusalem,  and  their 
intercourse  with  Palestine  was  too  familiar  and  frequent 
to  suffer  them  to  fall  into  the  position  of  an  isolated 
and  ignorant  sect.  In  fact,  we  have  the  testimony  of 
the  author  of  the  prologue  to  Ecclesiasticus  that,  when 
he  came  from  Palestine  to  Egypt,  he  found  there  no 
small  measure  of  learning  and  discipline  in  matters  of 
religion. 

All  this  makes  it  highly  improbable  that  the  Jews 
of  Egypt  would  have  contented  themselves  with  a 
translation  below  the   standard  of  Palestine,  or  that 


LECT.  IV.  AND  PALESTINIANS.  101 

they  would  have  found  any  difficulty  in  procurino- 
manuscripts  of  the  approved  official  recension,  if  such 
a  recension  had  then  existed.  But  the  argument  may  be 
carried  further.  In  the  time  of  Christ  there  were  many 
Hellenistic  Jews  resident  in  Jerusalem,  with  synagogues 
of  their  own,  where  the  Greek  version  was  necessarily 
in  regular  use.  We  find  these  Hellenists  in  Acts  vi. 
living  on  the  best  terms  with  the  religious  authorities  of 
the  capital.  Hellenists  and  Hebrews,  the  Septuagint 
and  the  original  text,  met  in  Jerusalem  without  schism 
or  controversy.  Yet  many  of  the  Palestinian  scholars 
were  familiar  with  Greek,  and  Paul  cannot  have 
been  the  only  man  born  in  the  Hellenistic  dispersion, 
and  accustomed  from  infancy  to  the  Greek  version,  who 
afterwards  studied  under  Palestinian  doctors,  and  became 
equally  famihar  with  the  Hebrew  text.  The  divergences 
of  the  Septuagint  must  have  been  patent  to  all  Jerusalem. 
Yet  we  find  no  attempt  to  condemn  and  suppress  this 
version  till  the  second  century,  when  the  rise  of  the 
new  school  of  exegesis,  and  the  consequent  introduction 
of  a  fixed  official  text,  were  followed  by  the  discrediting 
of  the  old  Greek  Bible  in  favour  of  the  new  translation 
by  Aquila.  On  the  contrary,  early  Eabbinical  tradition 
expressly  recognises  the  Greek  version  as  legitimate. 
In  some  passages  of  the  Jewish  books  mention  is  made 
of  thirteen  places  in  wliich  those  who  "wrote  for 
Ptolemy"  departed  from  the  Hebrew  text.  But  these 
changes,  which  are  similar  in  character  to  the  "  correc- 
tions of  the  Scribes  "  spoken  of  in  last  Lecture,  are  not 


1 02  JE  WISH  ESTIMA  TE  lect.  iv. 

repreliended ;  and  in  one  form  of  the  tradition  they  are 
even  said  to  have  been  made  by  divine  inspiration. 
The  account  of  these  thirteen  passages  contains  mis- 
takes which  show  that  the  tradition  was  written  down 
after  the  Septuagint  had  ceased  to  be  a  familiar  book 
in  Palestine.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  graver  varia- 
tions of  the  Egyptian  text  are  passed  over  in  absolute 
silence,  and  had  apparently  fallen  into  oblivion.  But 
the  tradition  recalls  a  time  when  Hebrew  scholars  knew 
the  Greek  version  well,  and  noted  its  variations  in  a 
friendly  spirit  of  tolerance.  These  facts  are  entirely 
inconsistent  with  the  idea  that  the  Egj^ptian  text  was 
viewed  as  corrupt.  To  the  older  Jewish  tradition  its 
variations  appeared,  not  in  the  light  of  deviations  from 
an  acknowledged  standard,  but  as  features  fairly  witliin 
the  limits  of  a  faithful  transmission  or  interpretation  of 
the  text.  And  so  the  comparison  of  the  Septuagint  with 
the  Hebrew  Bible  not  merely  furnishes  us  with  fresh 
critical  material  for  the  text  of  individual  passages,  but 
supplies  a  measure  of  the  limits  of  variation  which  were 
tolerated  two  hundred  years  after  Ezra,  when  the  version 
was  first  written,  and  indeed  from  that  time  downwards 
until  the  apostolic  age.  For  in  the  times  of  the  ISTew 
Testament  the  Greek  and  Hebrew  Bibles  were  current 
side  by  side ;  and  men  like  the  apostles,  who  knew  both 
languages,  used  either  text  indifferently,  or  even  quoted 
the  Old  Testament  from  memory,  as  Paul  often  does, 
with  a  laxness  surprising  to  the  reader  who  judges  by  a 
modern  rule,  but  very  natural  in  the  condition  of  the 


LECT.  IV.  OF  THE  SEPTUAGINT.  103 

text  which  we  have  just  characterised.  It  may  be 
observed  in  passing  that  these  considerations  remove  a 
great  part  of  the  difficulties  which  are  commonly  felt  to 
attach  to  the  citations  of  the  Old  Testament  in  the 
New/'^ 

\Ylien  we  say  that  the  readings  of  the  Septuagint 
afford  a  fair  measure  of  the  limits  of  variation  in  the 
early  history  of  the  text,  it  is  by  no  means  implied  that 
the  Greek  version,  taken  as  a  whole,  is  as  valuable  as 
the  Hebrew  text.  A  translation  can  never  supply  the 
place  of  a  manuscript.  There  is  always  an  allowance 
to  be  made  for  errors  of  translation  and  licences  of 
interpretation ;  and  even  if  we  possessed  the  Septuagint 
in  its  original  form  it  would  be  necessary  to  use  it  with 
great  caution  as  an  instrument  of  textual  criticism. 
But  in  reality  this  use  of  the  Septuagint  is  made  greatly 
more  difficult  and  uncertain  by  many  corruptions  which 
it  underwent  in  the  course  of  transmission.  The  text 
of  the  Septuagint  was  in  a  deplorable  state  even  in  the 
days  of  Origen  at  the  close  of  the  second  Christian 
century.  In  his  Hexaplar  Bible,  in  which  the  Hebrew, 
the  Septuagint,  and  the  later  Greek  versions  were 
arranged  in  parallel  columns,  Origen  made  a  notable 
attempt  to  purify  the  text,  and  indicate  its  variations 
from  the  Hebrew.  But  the  use  made  of  Origen's  labours 
by  later  generations  rather  increased  the  mischief,  and 
in  the  present  day  it  is  an  affair  of  the  most  delicate 
scholarship  to  make  profitable  use  of  the  Alexandrian 
version   for  the    confirmation   or  emendation   of    the 


104  TEXTUAL  AND  lect.  iv. 

Hebrew.  The  work  has  often  fallen  into  incompetent 
hands,  and  their  rashness  is  a  chief  reason  why  cautious 
scholars  are  still  apt  to  look  with  unjustifiable  indiffer- 
ence on  what,  after  all,  is  our  oldest  witness  to  the 
history  of  the  text  of  the  Old  Testament,  a  valuable 
evidence  for  the  general  purity  of  the  Hebrew  Bible, 
and  an  important  guide  towards  those  corrections  which 
can  never  be  wholly  unnecessary  in  a  book  transmitted 
from  so  early  a  date,  on  what  is  practically  the  authority 
of  a  single  manuscript. 

For  our  present  purpose  it  is  not  necessary  that  I 
should  conduct  you  over  the  delicate  ground  which 
cannot  be  safely  trodden  save  by  the  most  experienced 
scholarship.  My  object  will  be  attained  if  I  succeed  in 
conveying  to  you  by  a  few  plain  examples  a  just  concep- 
tion of  the  methods  of  the  ancient  copyists  as  they  stand 
revealed  to  us  in  the  broader  differences  between  the 
Hebrew  and  the  Septuagint.  It  will  conduce  to  clear- 
ness if  I  indicate  at  the  outset  the  conclusions  to  which 
these  differences  appear  to  point,  and  the  proof  of  which 
will  be  specially  contemplated  in  the  details  which  I 
shall  presently  set  before  you.  I  shall  endeavour  to 
show  that  the  comparison  of  the  Hebrew  and  Greek 
texts  carries  us  beyond  the  sphere  of  mere  verbal 
variations  with  which  textual  criticism  is  generally 
busied,  and  introduces  us  to  a  series  of  questions  affect- 
ing the  composition,  the  editing,  and  the  collection  of 
the  sacred  books.  This  class  of  questions  forms  the 
special  subject  of  the  branch  of  critical  science  which 


LECT.  IV.  HIGHER  CRITICISM,  105 

is  usually  distinguished  from  the  verbal  criticism  of  the 
text  by  the  name  of  Higher  or  Historical  Criticism. 
The  value  of  textual  criticism  is  now  admitted  on  all 
hands.  The  first  collections  of  various  readings  for  the 
New  Testament  excited  great  alarm,  but  it  was  soon 
seen  to  be  absurd  to  quarrel  with  facts.  Various  read- 
ings were  actually  found  in  MSS.,  and  it  was  necessary 
to  make  the  best  of  them.  But  while  textual  criticism 
admittedly  deals  with  facts,  the  higher  criticism  is  often 
supposed  to  have  no  other  basis  than  the  subjective 
fancies  and  arbitrary  hypotheses  of  scholars.  When 
critics  maintain  that  some  Old  Testament  writinojs, 
traditionally  ascribed  to  a  single  hand,  are  really  of 
composite  origin,  and  that  many  of  the  Hebrew  books 
have  gone  through  successive  redactions, — or,  in  other 
words,  have  been  edited  and  re -edited  in  different  ages, 
receiving  some  addition  or  modification  at  the  hand  of 
each  editor, — it  is  often  supposed  that  these  are  mere 
theories  devised  to  account  for  facts  which  may  be 
susceptible  of  a  very  different  explanation.  It  is  thought 
incredible  that  inspired  books  should  have  been  sub- 
jected to  such  treatment ;  and,  following  the  Newtonian 
rule  that  every  hypothesis  must  have  a  basis  in  demon- 
strable fact,  conservative  theologians  refuse  to  accept 
the  critical  theories  till  external  evidence  is  produced 
that  editors  and  compilers  actually  dealt  with  parts  of 
the  Bible  in  the  way  which  critics  assume.  Here  it  is 
that  the  Septuagint  comes  in  to  justify  the  critics,  and 
provide  external  evidence  of  the  sort  of  thing  which  to 


106  METHODS  OF  lect.  iv. 

the  conservative  school  seems  so  incredible.  The  varia- 
tions of  the  Greek  and  Hebrew  text  reveal  to  ns  a  time 
when  the  functions  of  copyist  and  editor  shaded  into 
one  another  by  imperceptible  degrees.  They  not  only 
prove  that  Old  Testament  books  were  subjected  to  such 
processes  of  successive  editing  as  critics  maintain,  but 
that  the  work  of  redaction  went  on  to  so  late  a  date 
that  editorial  changes  are  found  in  the  present  Hebrew 
text  which  did  not  exist  in  the  MSS.  of  the  Greek  trans- 
lators. The  details  of  the  evidence  will  make  my 
meaning  more  clear,  but  in  general  what  I  desire  to 
impress  upon  you  is  this.  The  evidence  of  the  Septua- 
gint  proves  that  early  copyists  had  a  very  different  view 
of  their  responsibility  from  that  which  we  might  be  apt 
to  ascribe  to  them.  They  were  not  reckless  or  indif- 
ferent to  the  truth.  They  copied  the  Old  Testament 
books  knowing  them  to  be  sacred  books,  and  they  were 
zealous  to  preserve  them  as  writings  of  Divine  authority. 
But  their  sense  of  responsibility  to  the  Divine  word 
regarded  the  meaning  rather  than  the  form,  and  they 
had  not  that  highly-developed  sense  of  the  importance 
of  preserving  every  word  and  every  letter  of  the  original 
hand  of  the  author  which  seems  natural  to  us.  When 
we  look  at  the  matter  carefully,  we  observe  that  the 
difference  between  them  and  us  lies,  not  in  any  reli- 
gious principle,  but  in  the  literary  ideas  of  those  ancient 
times.  From  our  point  of  view  a  book  is  the  property 
of  the  author.  You  may  buy  a  copy  of  it,  but  you  do 
not  thereby  acquire  a  literary  property  in  the  work,  or 


LECT.  IV.  EARL  V  COP  YISTS.  107 

a  right  to  tamper  with  the  style  and  alter  the  words 
of  the  author  even  to  make  his  sense  more  distinct. 
But  this  idea  was  too  subtle  for  those  ancient  times. 
The  man  who  had  bought  or  copied  a  book  held  it  to  be 
his  own  for  every  purpose.  He  valued  it  for  its  con- 
tents, and  therefore  would  not  disfigure  these  by  arbi- 
trary changes.  But,  if  he  could  make  it  more  convenient 
for  use  by  adding  a  note  here,  putting  in  a  word  there, 
or  incorporating  additional  matter  derived  from  another 
source,  he  had  no  hesitation  in  doing  so.  In  short, 
every  ancient  scholar  who  copied  or  annotated  a  book 
for  his  own  use  was  very  much  in  the  position  of  a 
modern  editor,  with  the  difference  that  at  that  time  there 
was  no  system  of  footnotes,  brackets,  and  explanatory 
prefaces,  by  which  the  insertions  could  be  distinguished 
from  the  original  text. 

In  setting  before  you  some  examples  of  the  evidence 
which  enables  us  to  prove  this  thesis,  I  shall  begin  with 
the  question  of  the  titles  which  are  prefixed  to  some 
parts  of  the  Old  Testament.  A  large  proportion  of  the 
books  of  the  Old  Testament  are  anonymous.  The  Pen- 
tateuch, for  example,  bears  no  author's  name  on  its  front, 
although  certain  things  in  the  course  of  the  narrative  are 
said  to  have  been  written  down  by  Moses.  All  the 
historical  books  are  anonymous,  with  the  single  excep- 
tion of  one  of  the  latest  of  them,  the  memoirs  of  Nehe- 
miah,  in  which  the  author's  name  is  prefixed  to  the  first 
chapter.  This  fact  is  characteristic.  Why  do  the  authors 
not  give  their  names  ?    Because  the  literary  public  was 


108  ANONYMOUS  BOOKS.  lect.  iv. 

interested  in  the  substance  of  the  book,  but  was  not  con- 
cerned to  know  who  had  written  it.  That  is  the  only 
conceivable  reason.  The  idea  of  literary  property,  of 
the  book  belonging  to  the  author  instead  of  to  the  man 
who  had  bought  the  copy,  did  not  exist  then,  or  at  least 
was  very  little  developed. 

This  remark  applies  with  full  force  only  to  works 
like  the  Historical  Books,  which  were  products  of  the 
study,  and  did  not  derive  their  value  from  their  con- 
nection with  the  author's  public  life.  It  is  not  equally 
applicable  to  lyric  poetry,  where,  as  in  the  case  of 
David's  elegy  on  Saul  and  Jonathan,  the  interest  of  the 
poem  frequently  depends  on  the  authorship.  Least  of 
all  could  the  law  of  anonymity  apply  to  the  written 
collections  of  the  sermons  of  the  prophets,  which  were 
summaries  of  a  course  of  public  activity  in  which  the 
personality  of  the  prophet  could  not  be  separated  from 
his  words.  Thus,  while  the  historical  books  are  habitu- 
ally anonymous,  and  poetical  pieces  only  sometimes  bear 
an  author's  name,  it  is  the  rule  that  each  group  of  pro- 
phecies, and  often  each  individual  oracle,  has  the  name 
of  the  author  attached.  There  are,  indeed,  a  certain 
number  of  prophetic  writings  which  have  no  title ;  but 
these,  in  all  probability,  are  prophecies  which  were  never 
spoken,  which  were  composed  in  solitude,  and  circu- 
lated from  the  first  in  writing.  They  fall,  therefore, 
under  the  general  law  of  the  anonymity  of  books  which 
are  not  directly  connected  with  a  public  interest  attach- 
ing to  the  author's  life. 


LECT.  IV.  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVL  109 

The  chief  example  of  fin  anonymous  prophecy  is 

that   which   fills    the   last    twenty -seven   chapters   of 

Isaiah.      It  is  true  that  we  have  been  accustomed  by 

tradition  to  assume  that  this  prophecy  is  the  work  of 

Isaiah, — or,  in  other  words,  that  the  title  which  stands 

at  the  beginning  of  the  book  of  Isaiah  covers  the  last 

twenty-seven  chapters  also.     This  seems  a  natural  and 

plausible  assumption  from  our  point  of  view,  and  from 

our  habits  with  regard  to  the  use  of  title-pages  stating 

everything  that  a  volume  contains;   but  no  one  who 

has  been  personally  occupied  with  old  Eastern  MSS., 

and  has  observed  the  way  in  which  copyists,  on  account 

of  the  scarcity  and  costliness  of  writing  material,  were 

accustomed  to  fill  up  blank  pages  at  the  end  of  a  book 

by  writing  in  some  other  work  or  passage  which  they 

wished  to  preserve,  and  that  without  any  note  or  title 

whatever,  will  for  a  moment  venture  to  affirm  that  the 

title  at  the  beginning  of  the  book  must  necessarily  apply 

to  the  whole  contents  of  the  volume.     And  in  old  times, 

we  must  remember,  the  book  of  Isaiah  was  a  volume. 

It  was  still  a  separate  volume  in  the  time  of  Christ,  as 

we  learn  from  Luke  iv.  17.     I  do  not  at  present  press 

this  point  further,  or  attempt  to  decide  whether  these 

chapters  are  really  the  work  of  Isaiah,  or  whether,  as 

modern    criticism    holds,   they  proceed   from   a  later 

prophet.     In  either  case,  they  form  a  distinct  literary 

work;   for  those  who  uphold  the  traditional  view  of 

their  authorship  are  agreed  that  they  date  from  the 

latest  times  of  Isaiah's  life,  and  are  not  part  of  his 
6 


no  TITLES  OF  LECT.  iv. 

public  teaching  directed  to  the  immediate  needs  of  his 
own  age,  but  a  sort  of  testament  left  for  the  consolation 
of  the  Babylonian  exiles/^^  Even  on  this  view,  the  fact 
that  they  have  no  separate  title  demands  an  explana- 
tion, which  seems  to  flow  naturally  from  the  considera- 
tion that  products  of  the  study  were  in  those  days 
habitually  anonymous. 

It  is  easy  to  perceive,  however,  that  as  soon  as  a 
beginning  was  made  with  the  custom  of  prefixing  the 
author's  name  to  a  book — and  we  find  this  done  at  any 
rate  by  Nehemiah — the  use  of  titles  would  grow,  and 
readers  would  become  curious  to  have  the  author's 
name  in  every  case.  It  therefore  becomes  important  to 
ask  whether  all  the  titles  now  found  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment go  back  to  the  original  authors,  or  whether  some 
of  them  are  the  conjectures  of  later  copyists.  This 
question  is  naturally  suggested  by  what  we  find  in 
manuscripts  of  the  New  Testament,  many  of  which 
prefix  the  name  of  Paul  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews, 
although  it  is  quite  certain  that  the  oldest  copies  left 
the  Epistle  anonymous.  The  Septuagint  enables  us  to 
answer  the  question.  The  part  of  the  Old  Testament  in 
which  the  system  of  titles  has  been  carried  out  most 
fully  is  the  Book  of  Psalms.  The  titles  to  the  Psalms 
are  to  a  large  extent  directions  for  their  liturgical  per- 
formance in  the  service  of  the  Temple  music ;  but  they 
also  contain  the  names  of  men — David,  the  Sons  of 
Korah,  and  so  forth.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  there  is 
no  title  of  a  psalm  in  the  Hebrew  Bible  which  does  not 


LECT.  IV.  THE  PSALMS,  111 

go  back  to  the  author  of  the  psalm  ?  Let  us  consult 
the  Septuagint,  and  what  do  we  find  ?  We  find,  in 
the  first  place,  that  the  Septuagint  has  the  words  "  of " 
or  "  to  David "  in  a  number  of  psalms  where  the 
Hebrew  has  no  author's  name  (Psalms  x.,  xxxiii.,  xliii., 
Ixvii.,  Ixxi.,  xcL,  xciii.  to  xcix.,  civ.,  cxxxvii.);  and,  con- 
versely, it  omits  the  name  of  David  from  four,  and  the 
name  of  Solomon  from  one,  of  the  Psalms  of  Degrees 
(Psalms  cxxii.,  cxxiv.,  cxxxi.,  cxxxiii,  cxxvii.).  Now 
the  large  number  of  cases  in  which  the  Septuagint 
inserts  the  name  of  David  is  evidence  of  a  tendency  to 
ascribe  to  him  an  ever -increasing  number  of  psalms. 
That  tendency,  we  know,  went  on,  till  at  length  it 
became  a  common  opinion  that  he  was  the  author  of  the 
whole  Psalter.  We  cannot  therefore  suppose  that  the 
Greek  version,  or  the  Hebrew  MSS.  on  which  it  rested, 
would  omit  the  name  of  David  in  any  case  where  it 
had  once  stood ;  and  the  conclusion  is  inevitable  that 
at  least  in  four  cases  our  Hebrew  Bibles  have  the 
name  of  David  where  it  has  no  right  to  be,  and  that  the 
insertion  was  made  by  a  copyist  after  the  time  when 
the  text  of  the  Septuagint  branched  off.  But  if  this  be 
so,  it  is  impossible  to  maintain  on  principle  that  the 
titles  of  the  Psalms  are  throughout  authoritative ;  and  if 
there  is  no  principle  involved,  it  is  not  only  legitimate, 
but  an  absolute  duty,  to  test  every  title  by  comparing 
it  with  the  internal  evidence  supplied  by  the  poem 
itself. 

Similar  variations,  leading   to  similar  conclusions, 


112  EDITORIAL  lect.  iv. 

are  found  in  other  parts  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  even 
in  the  prophetical  books.  In  Jer.  xxvii.  1  the  Hebrew 
has  a  title  which  the  Septuagint  omits,  and  which 
every  one  can  see  to  be  a  mere  accidental  repetition  of 
the  title  of  chap.  xxvi.  Tor  the  prophecy  which  the 
title  ascribes  to  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Jehoiakim 
is  addressed  in  the  most  explicit  way  to  Zedekiah,  king 
of  Judah  (verses  3,  12).  So  again  the  Septuagint 
omits  the  name  of  Jeremiah  in  the  title  to  the  prophecy 
against  Babylon  (chaps.  1.,  li.),  which,  for  other  reasons, 
modern  critics  generally  ascribe  to  a  later  prophet. 
Here,  it  is  true,  chap.  li.  59-64  may  seem  to  be  a  sub- 
scription establishing  the  traditional  authorship.  But 
a  note  at  the  end  of  the  chapter  in  the  Hebrew 
expressly  says  that  the  words  of  Jeremiah  end  with 
"  they  shall  be  weary," — the  close  of  ver.  58.  This  note 
is  the  real  subscription  to  the  prophecy,  and  it  is  also 
omitted  by  the  Septuagint. ^^^ 

I  now  pass  to  an  example  of  editorial  redaction, 
involving  a  series  of  changes  running  through  the  whole 
structure  of  a  passage.  For  this  purpose  I  select  the 
twenty-seventh  chapter  of  Jeremiah,  the  Hebrew  title 
of  which  has  already  been  shown  to  be  an  editorial 
insertion.  We  are  now  to  see  that  the  hand  of  an 
editor  has  been  at  work  all  through  the  chapter.  Let 
me  say  at  the  outset  that  the  example  is  a  somewhat 
unusual  one.  There  are  not  many  parts  of  the  Old 
Testament  where  the  variations  of  the  Greek  and 
Hebrew  are   so   extensive   as  in   Jeremiah;  but  it  is 


LECT.  IV.  REDACTION.  113 

necessary  to  choose  a  well-marked  case  in  order  to 
convey  a  distinct  conception  of  the  limits  of  editorial 
interference.  To  facilitate  comparison,  I  print  a  trans- 
lation of  the  Hebrew  text,  putting  everything  in  italics 
which  is  omitted  by  the  Septuagint.  The  Greek  has 
some  other  slight  variations,  which  are  not  of  conse- 
quence for  our  present  purpose.  The  essential  differ- 
ence between  the  two  texts  is  that  the  Hebrew,  without 
omitting  anytliing  that  is  in  the  Greek,  has  a  number 
of  additional  clauses  and  sentences. 

In  the  reign  of  King  Zedekiah  a  congress  of  am- 
bassadors from  the  neighbouring*  nations  was  held  at 
Jerusalem,  to  concert  a  rising  against  Nebuchadnezzar. 
The  prophets  and  diviners  encouraged  this  scheme ;  but 
Jeremiah  was  commanded  by  the  Lord  to  protest 
against  it,  and  declare  that  the  empire  of  Nebuchad- 
nezzar had  been  conferred  on  him  by  Jehovah's  de- 
cree, and  that  it  was  vain  to  rebel.  The  prophetic 
message  delivered  in  the  name  of  the  God  of  Israel  ran 
thus  : — 

Jer.  xxvii.  5. — I  have  made  the  earth,  fhe  man  and  the  beast 
which  are  upon  the  face  of  the  earthy  by  my  great  power  and  out- 
stretched arm,  and  give  it  to  whom  I  please.  (6.)  And  now  I 
have  given  all  these  lands  [LXX.  the  earth]  into  the  hand  of 
Nebuchadnezzar.  .  .  .  (7.)  And  all  nations  shall  serve  him  and 
his  son  and  his  son's  son,  till  the  tiine  of  his  land  come  also,  and 
mights/  nations  and  great  Jciiujs  malce  him  their  servant.  (8.)  And 
the  nation  and  kingdom  which  will  not  serve  him,  Nebnchad- 
nezzar,  king  of  Babylon,  and  put  their  neck  under  the  yoke  of  the 
king  of  Babylon,  will  I  punish,  saith  the  Lord,  with  the  sword, 
and  with  famine,  and  icith  pestilence,  till  I  have  consumed  them 
by  his  hand.     (9.)  Therefore  hearken  ye  not  to  your  prophets, 


114  TEXT  OF  LECT.  IV. 

.  .  .  wliich  say  ye  shall  not  serve  the  king  of  Babylon.  (10.) 
For  they  prophesy  lies  to  you  to  remove  you  from  your  land, 
and.  that  I  should  drive  you  out  and  ye  should  perish.   .  .   . 

(12.)  And  to  Zedekiah,  king  of  Judah,  I  spake  with  all  these 
words,  saying.  Bring  your  neck  under  the  yolce  of  the  king  of  Baby- 
lon, and  serve  him  and  his  people,  and  live.  (13.)  Why  will  ye 
die,  thou  and  thy  people,  by  the  sword,  by  famine,  and  by  pestilence, 
as  the  Lord  hath  spoken  against  the  nation  that  will  not  serve  the 
king  of  Babylon?  (14.)  Therefore  hearken  not  unto  the  words  of 
the  prophets  who  speak  unto  you,  saying.  Serve  not  the  king  of 
Babylon;  for  they  [emphatic]  prophesy  lies  unto  you.     (15.)  For  | 

I  have  not  sent  them,  saith  the  Lord,  and  they  prophesy  lies  in  • 

my  name.  ...  ' 

(16.)  And  to  the  priests  and  to  all  this  people  [LXX.  to  all  i 

the  people  and  the  priests]  I  spake  saying,  Thus  saith  the  Lord 
Hearken  not  to  the.  words  of  your  prophets  who  prophesy  to  : 

you,  saying,  Behold  the  vessels  of  the  house  of  the  Lord  shall  be 
brought  back  from  Babylon  now  quickly,  for  they  prophesy  a  lie  \ 

unto  you.  (17.)  Hearken  not  unto  them,  [LXX.  I  have  not  sent 
them],  serve  the  king  of  Babylon,  and  live ;  wherefore  should  this  j 

city  be  laid  waste  1     (18.)  But  if  they  are  prophets,  and  if  the  j 

word  of  the  Lord  is  with  them,  let  them  intercede  with  the  Lord  i 

of  Hosts  [LXX.  with  me],  that  the  vessels  which  are  left  in  the  j 

house  of  the  Lord,  and  the  house  of  the  king  of  Judah,  and  in  j 

Jerusalem,  come  not  to  Babylon.     (19.)  For  thus  saith  the  Lord  ^ 

of  Hosts  concerning  the  pillars  and  the  sea  and  the  bases,  and  the  i 

rest  of  the  vessels  left  in  this  city,  (20.)  Which  Nebuchadnezzar  i 

king  of  Babylon  took  not  when  he  carried  Jeconiah  son  of  \ 

Jehoiakim  king  of  Judah  captive  from  Jerusalem  to  Babylon,  and  j 

all  the  nobles  of  Judah  and  Jerusalem;  (21.)  For  thus  saith  the  \ 

Lord  of  Hosts,  the  God  of  Israel,  concerning  the  vessels  left  in  the  i 

house  of  God,  and  in  the  house  of  the  king  of  Judah  and  Jerusalem  ;  \ 

(22.)  They  shall  be  taken  to  Babylon,  and  there  shall  they  be  \ 

unto  the  day  that  I  visit  them,  saith  the  Lord ;  then  will  I  bring  i 

them  up  and  restore  them  to  this  place.  \ 

,1 

Throughout  these  verses  the  general  effect  of  the  ■} 
omissions  of  the  Septuagint  is  to  make  the  style  ; 
simpler,  more  natural,  and  more  forcible.     At  verses         | 


LECT.  IV.  JEREMIAH  XXVII.  115 

8,  10,  12,  13,  17,  the  additional  matter  of  the  Massoretic 
text  is  mere  repetition  of  ideas  fully  expressed  in  the 
shorter  recension ;  and  at  ver.  14  the  omissions  of  the 
Septuagint  give  the  proper  oratorical  value  to  the 
emphatic  "  they  "  of  the  original,  which  the  prophet,  in 
genuine  Hebrew  style,  must  have  spoken  with  a  gesture 
pointing  to  the  false  prophets  who  stood  before  the 
king.  It  is  not  to  be  thought  that  a  later  copyist 
added  nerve  and  force  to  the  prophecy  by  pruning  the 
prolixities  of  the  original  text.  Jeremiah  is  no  mean 
orator  and  author,  and  the  prolixities  are  much  more  in 
the  wearisome  style  of  the  later  Jewish  literature. 

But  in  some  parts  the  two  recensions  differ  in 
meaning  as  well  as  language.  At  verse  7  the  Hebrew 
text  inserts  in  the  midst  of  Jeremiah's  exhortation  to 
submission  a  prophecy  that  the  Babylonians  shall  be 
punished  in  the  third  generation.  No  doubt  Jeremiah 
does  elsewhere  predict  the  fall  of  Babylon  and  the 
restoration  of  Israel.  He  had  done  so  at  an  earlier 
date  (xxv.  11-13).  But  is  it  natural  that  he  should 
turn  aside  to  introduce  such  a  prediction  here,  in  the 
very  midst  of  a  solemn  admonition,  on  wliich  it  has  no 
direct  bearing?  And  is  this  a  thing  which  a  copyist 
would  be  tempted  to  omit  ?  Much  rather  was  it  natural 
for  a  later  scribe  to  introduce  it.  Again,  at  verse  16, 
the  Hebrew  text  modifies  the  prediction  of  the  restora- 
tion of  the  sacred  vessels  made  by  the  false  prophets,  by 
the  insertion  of  the  words  now  quickly.  There  was  no 
motive  for  the   omission  of  these  words,  if  they  are 


116  TEXT  OF  LECT.  IV. 

original.  But  a  later  scribe,  reflecting  on  the  fact  that 
the  sacred  vessels  were  restored  by  Cyrus,  might  well 
insert  these  words  to  deprive  the  false  prophets  of  any 
claim  to  have  spoken  truly  after  all.  In  reality  it  does 
not  need  these  words  to  prove  them  liars ;  for  their  pre- 
diction, taken  in  the  context,  plainly  meant  that  the 
alliance  should  defeat  Nebuchadnezzar  and  recover  the 
spoil.  But  the  words  "  now  quickly"  stand  or  fall  with 
the  prediction  put  into  Jeremiah's  mouth,  in  verse  22, 
that  the  vessels  of  the  temple  and  the  palace,  including 
the  brazen  pillars,  sea,  and  bases,  should  be  taken  indeed 
to  Babylon,  but  be  brought  back  again  in  the  day  of 
visitation.  This  is  plainly  the  spurious  insertion  of  a 
thoughtless  copyist,  who  had  his  eye  on  chapter  lii.  17. 
For  it  is  true  that  the  pillars,  the  sea,  and  the  bases 
were  carried  to  Babylon,  but  they  were  not  and  could 
not  have  been  brought  back.  These  huge  masses  could 
not  have  been  transported  entire  across  the  mountains 
and  deserts  that  separated  Judea  from  Babylon.  And 
so  we  are  expressly  told  in  chapter  lii.  that  they  were 
broken  up  and  carried  off  as  old  brass,  fit  only  for  the 
melting-pot.  Jeremiah  and  his  hearers  knew  well  that 
they  could  not  reach  Babylon  in  any  other  form,  and  in 
his  mouth  the  prediction  which  we  read  in  the  Hebrew 
text  would  have  been  not  only  false,  but  palpably  ab- 
surd. That  such  a  prediction  now  stands  in  the  text 
only  proves  what  the  thoughtlessness  of  copyists  was 
capable  of,  and  makes  the  reading  of  the  Septuagint 
absolutely  certain. 


LECT.  IV.  JEREMIAH  XXVIL  117 


We  conclude,  then,  from  a  plain  argument  of  physical 
impossibility,  that  Jeremiah  did  not  predict  the  restora- 
tion of  the  spoils  of  the  Temple.  And  by  this  result 
we  remove  a  serious  inconsistency  from  his  religious 
teaching.  For  the  restoration  to  which  Jeremiah  con- 
stantly looks  is  not  the  re -establishment  of  the  old 
ritual,  but  the  bringing  in  of  a  spiritual  covenant  when 
God's  law  shall  be  written  on  the  hearts  of  the  people 
(chap.  xxxi.).  No  prophet  thinks  more  lightly  of  the 
service  of  the  Temple  (chap.  vii.).  He  denies  that  God 
gave  a  law  of  sacrifice  to  the  people  when  they  left 
Egypt.  They  may  eat  their  burnt-offerings  as  well  as 
the  other  sacrifices,  and  God  will  not  condemn  them 
(vii.  21,  22).  Even  the  ark  of  the  covenant  is  in-  his 
eyes  an  obsolete  symbol,  wliich  in  the  day  of  Israel's 
conversion  sliall  not  be  missed  and  not  be  remade  (iii. 
16).  To  the  false  prophets  and  the  people  who  followed 
them,  the  ark,  the  temple,  the  holy  vessels,  were  all  in 
aU.  To  Jeremiah  they  were  less  than  nothing,  and  their 
restoration  was  no  part  of  his  hope  of  salvation.  ^^^ 


118  JEREMIAH  AND  lect.  v. 


LECTUEE    V. 

THE  SEPTUAGINT  {continued) — THE  CANOIS. 

In  last  Lecture  we  began  to  examine  those  features  of 
the  Septuagint  which  bear  witness  to  the  kind  of  labour 
that  was  spent  on  the  text  by  ancient  editors.  We 
have  seen  how  editors  or  copyists  sometimes  added  titles 
to  anonymous  pieces,  and  how  by  a  series  of  small 
redactional  changes,  running  from  verse  to  verse  through 
a  chapter,  the  form  and  even  the  meaning  of  an  im- 
portant passage  were  sometimes  considerably  modified. 

We  now  come  to  another  branch  of  the  subject, 
in  which  we  have  not  to  deal  with  mere  arbitrary 
additions  and  corrections  made  by  editors  out  of  their 
own  head,  but  with  features  of  the  text  wliich  illus- 
trate the  composite  character  of  some  of  the  Biblical 
books  which  we  have  been  wont  to  look  upon  as  con- 
tinuous unities. 

I  begin  with  the  transpositions  of  the  Septuagint 
text,  and  choose  as  my  first  example  the  chapters 
comprising  Jeremiah's  prophecies  against  the  heathen 
nations.  In  our  Bibles,  and  in  the  Hebrew  Bible, 
these  prophecies  occupy  chapters  xlvi.  to  li.  In  the 
Septuagint  they  foUow  the  13  th  verse  of  the  twenty-fifth 


LECT.  V.  THE  NATIONS.  119 

chapter,  and  appear  in  a  different  order.  In  the 
Hebrew  the  sequence  is  Egypt,  Philistines,  Moab, 
Amnion,  Edom,  Damascus,  Kedar  and  Hazor,  Elam, 
Babylon.  The  Septuagint  sequence  is  Elam,  Eg}^pt, 
Babylon,  Philistines,  Edom,  Ammon,  Kedar  and  Hazor, 
Damascus,  Moab.  Can  we  then  assume  that  in  this  case 
the  translator  of  the  Septuagint  version,  having  before 
him  a  fixed  and  certain  order  of  all  Jeremiah's  oracles, 
took  the  liberty  to  shift  the  prophecies  against  the  nations 
through  one  another,  and  to  put  them  in  an  entirely 
different  part  of  the  book  ?  From  what  we  have  seen 
already  as  to  the  general  way  in  which  these  transla- 
tors acted,  such  an  assumption  is  highly  improbable. 
Eather  we  are  to  suppose  that  in  their  copy  these  pro- 
phecies already  occupied  a  different  place  from  what 
they  hold  in  the  Hebrew  Bible. 

What  does  that  lead  us  to  conclude  ?  Variations  in 
the  order  of  the  individual  places  may  veiy  weU  happen 
in  collected  editions  of  writings  originally  published 
separately,  but  not  in  a  single  book  of  one  author.  And 
that  is  just  what  the  facts  lead  us  otherwise  to  suppose, 
for  we  know  that  Jeremiah's  prophecies  were  not  all 
written  down  at  one  time,  or  in  the  order  in  which 
they  now  stand.  We  learn  from  chap,  xxxvi.  that  a 
record  of  the  first  twenty-three  years  of  his  prophetic 
ministry  was  dictated  by  the  prophet  to  Baruch  in  the 
fourth  year  of  Jehoiakim.  But  this  book  does  not 
correspond  with  the  first  part  of  the  present  book  of 
Jeremiah,  in  which  prophecies  later  than  the  reign  of 


120  JEREMIAH  XLVL—LI.  lect.  v. 

Jehoiakim — such  as  chap.  xxiv. — precede  others  which 
must  have  stood  in  the  original  collection  (chap.  xxvi.). 
Jeremiah's  book,  then,  as  we  have  it,  is  not  a  continuous 
record  of  his  prophecies,  which  he  himseK  kept  con- 
stantly posted  up  to  date,  but  a  compilation  made  up 
from  several  prophetic  writings  originally  published 
separately.  In  this  compilation  the  natural  order  is 
not  always  observed,  for  it  is  plain  that  chap,  xlv.,  con- 
taining a  brief  prophecy  addressed  to  Baruch,  "  when 
he  wrote  these  words  in  a  book  at  the  mouth  of  Jere- 
miah in  the  fourth  year  of  Jehoiakim  "  (ver.  1),  must 
originally  have  stood  at  the  close  of  the  collection 
spoken  of  in  chap,  xxxvi.  It  is  easy  then  to  under- 
stand that,  when  several  distinct  books  of  Jeremiah's 
words  and  deeds  were  brought  together  into  one  volume, 
there  might  be  variations  of  order  in  different  copies  of 
the  collection,  just  as  modern  editions  of  the  collected 
works  of  one  author  frequently  differ  in  arrangement. 

It  is  very  doubtful  whether  this  group  of  pro- 
phecies appears  just  as  they  were  first  published,  either 
in  the  Septuagint  or  in  the  Hebrew.  The  order  of  the 
individual  prophecies  seems  to  be  more  suitable  in  the 
Hebrew  and  English  texts;  for  chap.  xxv.  15  se^.  con- 
tains a  sort  of  brief  summary  or  general  conspectus  of 
Jeremiah's  prophecies  against  the  nations,  and  here 
the  order  agrees  very  closely  with  that  in  our  present 
Hebrew  text  as  against  the  Septuagint;  but  then,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  summary  of  Jeremiah's  prophecies 
against  the  nations  is  found  in  the  twenty-fifth  chapter, 


LECT.  V.  THE  PROVERBS.  121 

whereas  in  our  present  edition  the  details  under  this 
general  sketch  begin  at  chap.  xlvi.  Much  more  natural 
in  this  respect  is  the  arrangement  of  the  Septuagint, 
placing  all  the  details  in  immediate  juxtaposition  with 
the  general  summary ;  so  that  here  we  seem  to  have  a 
case  in  which  neither  edition  of  Jeremiah's  prophecies 
is  thoroughly  satisfactory  and  in  good  order.  But  the 
general  conclusion  is  that  the  transpositions  give  us  a 
key  to  the  way  in  which  the  book  came  together,  show- 
ing that  it  was  not  all  written  in  continuous  unity  by 
Jeremiah  himself  as  one  book,  but  has  the  character  of 
a  compilation,  or  collected  edition,  of  several  writings. 
We  observe,  also,  that  the  compilers  did  not  execute 
their  work  with  perfect  skill ;  and  so  it  would  plainly 
be  unreasonable  to  accuse  every  critic  of  rationalism 
who  ventures  to  judge  on  internal  or  other  evidence 
that  the  collection  may  possibly  contain  some  chapters, 
such  as  1.  li.,  which  are  not  from  the  hand  of  Jeremiah 
at  all. 

Another  example  of  the  important  inferences  that 
may  be  drawn  from  the  transpositions  of  the  Septua- 
gint occurs  in  the  Book  of  Proverbs.  I  presume  that 
many  of  us  have  been  accustomed  to  think  of  the 
Proverbs  as  a  single  composition,  written  from  nrst  to 
last  by  Solomon.  But  here  again  we  find  such  transpo- 
sitions as  indicate  that  the  book  is  not  so  much  one 
continuous  writing  as  a  collected  edition  of  various 
proverbial  books  and  tracts.  For  example,  the  first 
fourteen  verses  of  Proverbs  xxx..  containmg  the  words 


122  THE  PROVERBS. 


of  Agur,  are  placed  in  the  Septuagint  collection  after 
the  22d  verse  of  chap.  xxiv.     Then  immediately  upon 
that  follows  chap.  xxiv.  23-34,  a  little  section  which  in 
the   Hebrew  has   a   separate    title, — "  These   also  are 
[words]  of  the  wise."     After  that  comes  chap.  xxx.  15. 
In  our  English  Bible  this  verse  does  not  appear  to  open 
a  new  section  :  we  translate  it — "  The  horseleach  hath 
two   daughters,  crying,   Give,   give,"   an    obscure    and 
enigmatical  expression,  which  has  puzzled  all  comment- 
ators.    Most  probably  the  translation  "horseleach"  is 
incorrect.      The  verse  begins  —  [""Words]    of  Alukah. 
'  There  are  two  daughters  of  '  Give,  give,' " — that  is,  two 
iQsatiable  things, — "  yea,  three  that  are  never  satisfied," 
etc.     The  words  of  Alukah  are  followed  in  the  Septua- 
giQt,  as   in    the   Hebrew,   by   the  words    of   Lemuel 
(xxxi.  1-9).      Then  comes  the  collection  of  Salomonic 
proverbs  formed  by  the  scholars  in  the  service  of  King 
Hezekiah  (xxv.-xxix.)  ;  and  the  book  closes  with  the 
description  of  the  virtuous  woman  (xxxi.  10-31).     You 
see  how  the  fact  that  these  several  small  collections 
of  proverbs  are  grouped  in  such  different  order  in  the 
Septuagint  and  in  the  Hebrew  respectively  makes  it 
probable  that  they  originally  existed  as  separate  books ; 
so  that,  when  they  came  to  be  collected  into  one  volume, 
differences  of  order  might  readily  arise,  which  could 
hardly  have   happened   if  the  whole  had  been  the 
original  composition  of  Solomon  alone.     And  that  is 
quite  the  conclusion  to  which  critics  have  been  drawn 
by  evidence  of  another  sort, — that  the  Proverbs  are 


LECT.  V.  BOOKS  OF  KINGS,  123 

not  all  of  one  date,  that  the  book  no  doubt  contains 
proverbs  of  Solomon,  but  embraces  in  addition  to  them 
a  variety  of  matter  derived  from  other  sources/^^ 

Let  us  now  pass  to  a  similar  example  in  the  his- 
torical books.  Many  of  you  have  probably  observed  the 
way  in  which  the  history  of  the  reigns  subsequent  to 
Solomon  in  the  Books  of  Kings  is  made  up.  There  is 
what  critics  are  accustomed  to  call  the  framework  of 
the  history,  and  there  are  details  within  the  framework. 
The  framework  is  precisely  similar  in  form  for  each 
reign,  consisting  of  notices  of  the  accession  and  death 
of  the  king,  with  certain  stated  particulars  under  each 
head,  including  a  reference  to  the  royal  chronicles  of 
Judah  or  Israel,  as  the  case  may  be,  for  full  details  of 
the  reign.  These  notices  form  the  chronological  frame- 
work which  binds  the  whole  narrative  together.  But 
the  details  within  the  framework  do  not  in  themselves 
form  a  continuous  story,  and  are  plainly  not  all  written 
by  one  hand,  or  constructed  on  a  uniform  plan.  One 
reign  is  full  of  rich  episodes  and  picturesque  narrative, 
another  is  comparatively  barren  in  detail,  as  well  as  in 
style;  and  sometimes  we  find  sections  which,  in  addition 
to  variety  of  style  and  phrase,  show  marked  peculiarities 
of  grammatical  form.  From  a  closer  examination  of 
these  phenomena,  critics  have  been  led  to  distinguish, 
on  the  one  hand,  a  brief  epitome  of  public  ajBfairs,  with 
moral  judgments  on  each  sovereign,  which  runs  through 
the  whole  work  in  close  connection  with  the  chrono- 
logical framework,  and  appears  to  be  based  on  the  royal 


124  THE  BOOKS  lect.  v. 

annals  constantly  cited  as  the  original  authority  for  the 
history ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  variety  of  episodes 
which  are  but  loosely  connected  with  the  general  plan, 
and  which  in  many  cases  cannot  have  been  excerpted 
from  any  collection  of  official  records.  The  official 
chronicles  of  the  kings  of  Samaria,  for  example,  could 
not  have  contained  much  of  the  history  of  Elijah  and 
Elisha.  We  naturally  ask  whether  this  view,  based  on 
observation  of  the  internal  features  of  the  book,  finds 
any  support  of  external  evidence  from  the  oldest  version. 
The  answer  is  that  it  does.  In  the  Septuagint  certain 
episodes  of  the  history  are  removed  to  another  place,  or 
even  exist  in  a  somewhat  different  form,  as  if,  at  the 
time  when  this  version  was  made,  they  still  stood,  so  to 
speak,  apart  from  the  general  structure  of  the  narrative. 
For  example,  the  first  twenty  verses  of  1  Kings  xiv., 
containing  an  account  of  the  death  of  Abijah,  and  of 
his  mother's  journey  to  the  prophet  Ahijah,  when  he 
predicted  the  ruin  of  the  house  of  Jeroboam,  are  not 
found  in  the  Septuagint,  but  a  somewhat  different 
narrative  of  the  same  events  is  inserted  in  chapter  xii. 
There  are  other  transpositions  of  a  similar  kind  else- 
where. For  example,  the  history  of  the  death  of  Naboth 
(1  Kings  xxi.)  stands  in  the  Septuagint  before  chapter 
XX.,  so  that  the  narrative  of  Ahab's  Syrian  wars  is  made 
continuous.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  gives  a  more 
natural  order,  and  that  the  history  of  Naboth  is  really 
a  distinct  episode  in  Ahab's  life.  But,  without  pressing 
these  transpositions  beyond  what  they  manifestly  bear, 


LECT.  V.  OF  KINGS.  125 

it  is  at  least  safe  to  say  that  they  are  most  readily  ex- 
plained in  accordance  with  the  view,  otherwise  probable, 
that  the  framework  of  the  Books  of  Kings  is  filled  up 
by  narratives  from  several  distinct  sources,  which  were 
not  worked  up  by  the  editor  into  a  strictly  continuous 
story,  but  retained  so  much  of  their  original  independ- 
ent form  that  their  precise  order  was  to  some  extent 
a  matter  of  indifference.  This  conclusion  may  not 
appear  to  have  a  very  immediate  practical  importance. 
It  does  not  change  the  substance  of  the  record ;  but  it 
teaches  us  to  look  on  the  historical  books  as  to  some 
extent  composite  in  structure,  a  fact  which  has  more 
important  bearings  on  many  questions  of  interest  than 
one  might  at  first  sight  be  apt  to  suppose. 

We  come  now  to  passages  omitted  or  inserted  in  one 
or  other  form  of  the  text.  One  of  the  most  familiar  and 
instructive  of  these  is  the  story  of  David  and  Goliath 
(1  Sam.  xvii.)  The  story,  as  it  appears  in  our  English 
Bible,  presents  inextricable  difficulties.  In  the  previous 
chapters  we  are  told  how  David  is  introduced  to  the 
court  of  Saul,  and  becomes  a  favourite  with  the  king. 
Then  suddenly  we  have  the  account  of  a  campaign,  and 
we  learn,  without  any  explanation,  that  David,  although 
he  was  Saul's  armour-bearer,  did  not  follow  him  to  the 
field.  He  returns  to  his  father  Jesse,  and  is  sent  by 
Jesse  to  his  elder  brothers  in  the  camp,  who  treat  him 
with  a  degree  of  petulance  not  likely  to  be  displayed 
even  by  elder  brothers  to  a  youth  who  already  stood  well 
at  court.     But,  in  fact,  it  appears  from  the  close  of  the 


126  DAVID  AND  lect.  v. 

chapter  that  David  is  utterly  unknown  at  couit. 
Neither  Saul  nor  Abner  seems  ever  to  have  seen  him 
before.  Every  one  has  been  puzzled  by  these  apparent 
contradictions.  But  in  the  Septuagint,  verses  12  to 
31,  and  then  the  verses  from  the  65th  onwards  to  the 
5th  of  the  next  chapter,  are  omitted,  and  when  these 
are  removed  we  get  a  perfectly  consistent  and  natural 
account.  We  find  David  in  the  camp  and  in  attendance 
on  Saul,  just  as  we  should  expect.  He  volunteers 
to  fight  Goliath,  is  victorious  in  the  contest,  and 
returns  to  his  natural  place  in  attendance  on  Saul's 
person.  There  is  only  one  objection  that  can  be 
raised  to  this  shorter  form  of  the  text.  It  may  be 
said  that  the  story,  as  we  have  it  in  the  Hebrew,  is 
so  puzzling  that  the  Septuagint  may  have  deliberately 
omitted  the  difficult  verses  in  order  to  harmonise  the 
narrative.  But  when  we  take  the  verses  which  are 
found  in  the  Hebrew  and  not  in  the  Septuagint  and  put 
them  together,  we  find  that  they  are  fragments  of  an 
independent  account  of  the  affair,  according  to  which 
David  never  had  been  at  court,  but  was  a  mere  shepherd 
boy,  who,  having  been  sent  by  his  father  to  the  camp 
with  provisions  for  his  brethren,  volunteered  to  fight  the 
Pliilistine.  The  unknown  lad  thus  leaped  into  sudden 
fame.  He  was  retained  at  court,  and  Jonathan,  with 
impulsive  generosity,  at  once  received  him  as  his  dearest 
friend.  It  is  not  credible  that,  if  the  Septuagint  trans- 
lators had  set  themselves  arbitrarily  to  cut  down  a 
narrative  originally  homogeneous,  the  verses  which  they 


LECT.  V.  GOLIATH.  127 

omit  would  have  palpably  hung  together  as  bits  of  a 
different  and  self-consistent  account  of  the  whole  story. 
On  the  contrary,  we  are  forced  to  conclude  that  the  text 
of  the  Septuagint  is  complete  in  itself,  and  that  the 
additions  of  the  Hebrew  are  fragments  of  another 
account,  a  popular  and  less  accurate  version  of  the 
story,  wliich  must  once  have  been  current  in  a  separate 
book.  The  story  fell  in  this  form  into  the  hands  of 
some  ancient  reader,  who  engrossed  in  his  copy  of  the 
Books  of  Samuel  as  much  of  it  as  seemed  to  offer  matter 
of  fresh  interest ;  and  in  this  way  the  interpolation  ulti- 
mately became  fixed  in  the  text  of  our  Hebrew  Bibles. 
At  first  sight  this  conclusion  may  appear  startling.  We 
do  not  like  to  think  that  the  English  or  the  Hebrew 
Bible  can  contain  an  interpolated  narrative  of  inferior 
authenticity.  But  that  is  only  one  side  of  the  case. 
The  providence  wliich  permitted  the  interpolation  has 
preserved  to  us  the  Greek  version  in  evidence  of  the 
original  state  of  the  text,  enabling  us  even  at  this  day 
to  restore  the  true  form  of  an  important  narrative,  and 
remove  difficulties  which  have  been  a  stumbling-block 
in  the  way  of  all  thoughtful  readers.  To  shut  our  eyes 
to  the  evidence  of  the  Septuagint,  or  to  refuse  to  w^eigh 
it  by  the  ordinary  methods  of  sound  common  sense, 
would  be  an  act  of  timidity,  not  of  reverence ;  and  it  is 
well  to  learn  by  so  plain  an  example  that  He  who  gave 
us  the  Scriptures  has  suffered  them  to  contain  some 
difficulties  which  cannot  be  solved  without  the  applica- 
tion of  critical  processes. 


128  SAUL  AND  lect.  v. 

An  equally  striking  example  is  found  in  the  account 

given  in  the  very  next  chapter  of  the  gradual  progress 

of  Saul's  hostility  to  David.     When  the  women  came 

out  and  praised  David  above  Saul — 

1  Sam.  xviii.  8. — ^aul  was  very  wroth  and  the  saying  dis- 
pleased him  [LXX.  Saul],  and  he  said,  They  have  ascribed  unto 
David  myriads,  and  to  me  they  have  ascribed  thousands,  and 
wJiat  can  he  have  more  but  the  Jcingdom?  (9.)  And  Saul  eyed 
David  from  that  day,  and  forward.  (10,  11.)  Next  day  Saul  casta 
a  javelin  at  David.  (12.)  And  Saul  was  afraid  of  David,  because 
the  Lord  was  with  him  and  ivas  departed  from  Saul.  (13.)  And 
Saul  removed  him  from  his  person,  and  made  him  his  captain 
over  a  thousand,  and  he  went  out  and  in  before  the  people. 
(14.)  And  David  was  successful  in  all  that  he  undertook,  and 
the  Lord  was  with  him.  (15.)  And  when  Saul  saw  that  he  was 
so  successful,  he  dreaded  him.  (16.)  But  all  Israel  loved  David, 
because  he  went  out  and  came  in  before  them.  (17-19.)  Saul 
promises  Merah  to  David,  hut  disappoints  him.  (20-27.)  Michal 
falls  in  love  with  David,  and  Saul  avails  himself  of  this  oppor- 
tunity to  put  him  on  a  dangerous  enterprise  in  the  hope  that  he 
will  fall.  David,  however,  succeeds,  and  marries  Michal.*  (28.) 
And  when  Saul  saw,  and  knew  that  the  Lord  was  with  David, 
and  that  Michal  the  daughter  of  Saul  (LXX.  all  Israel)  loved  him, 
he  came  to  fear  David  still  more,  and  Jutted  David  continually. 
(29,  30.)  Thereafter  David  again  distinguishes  himself  in  war. 
(xix.  1.)     Saul  proposes  to  his  son  and  servants  to  kill  David. 

The  words  and  verses  printed  in  italics  are  omitted  in 

the  Septuagint.     Eead  without  them  the  progress  of  the 

narrative  is  perspicuous  and  consistent.     Saul's  jealousy 

is  first  roused  by  the  praises  bestowed  on  David,  and  he 

can  no  longer  bear  to  have  him  constantly  attached  to 

his  person.     Without  an  open  breach  of  relations,  he 

removes  him  from  court  by  giving  him  an  important 

*  The  words  iu  21  and  26,  which  refer  to  the  incident  of  Merab, 
are  not  in  LXX. 


LECT.  V.  DA  VID.  129 

post.  David's  conduct,  and  the  popularity  he  acquires 
in  his  new  and  more  independent  position,  intensify 
Saul's  former  fears  into  a  fixed  dread.  But  there  is  still 
no  overt  act  of  hostility  on  the  king's  part ;  he  hopes 
to  lead  David  to  destruction  by  stimulating  his  ambi- 
tion to  a  desperate  enterprise ;  and  it  is  only  when  this 
policy  fails,  and  David  returns  to  court  a  universal 
favourite,  with  the  new  importance  conferred  by  his 
alliance  with  the  royal  family,  that  Saul's  fears  wholly 
conquer  his  scruples,  and  he  plans  the  assassination  of 
his  son-in-law.  The  three  stages  of  this  growing  hostility 
are  marked  by  the  rising  strength  of  the  phrases  in 
verses  12,  15,  28.  The  additions  of  the  Hebrew  text 
destroy  the  psychological  truth  of  the  narrative.  Saul's 
fears  reach  the  highest  pitch  as  soon  as  his  jealousy  is 
first  aroused,  and  on  the  very  next  day  he  attempts  to 
slay  David  with  his  own  hand.  In  the  original  narra- 
tive this  attempt  comes  much  later,  and  is  accepted  by 
David  as  a  warning  to  flee  at  once  (xix.  10).  The  other 
additions  are  equally  inappropriate,  and  the  episode  of 
Merab  is  particularly  unintelligible.  It  seems  to  hang 
together  with  xvii.  25,  that  is,  with  the  interpolated  part 
of  the  story  of  Goliath ;  and  in  2  Sam.  xxi.  8,  Michal, 
not  Merab,  appears  as  the  mother  of  Adriel's  children. 
In  that  passage  the  English  version  has  attempted  to 
remove  the  difficulty  by  making  Michal  only  the  foster- 
mother,  but  the  Hebrew  will  not  bear  such  a  sense. 

Here,  then,  we  have  another  case  where  all  proba- 
bility is  in  favour  of  the  Greek  text,  and  a  fresh  example 


130  ARRANGEMENT  OF  lect.  v. 

of  the  principle  alluded  to  in  last  Lecture,  that,  where 
there  are  two  recensions  of  a  passage,  the  shorter  version 
is  almost  always  to  be  recognised  as  that  which  is  nearest 
to  the  hand  of  the  original  author.  Sometimes,  indeed,  we 
meet  with  an  insertion  which  is  valuable  because  derived 
from  an  ancient  source,  such  as  the  quotation  from  the 
Book  of  Jashar,  preserved  in  the  Septuagint  of  1  Kings 
viii.  53.  But  seldom  indeed  did  a  copyist,  unless  by 
sheer  oversight,  omit  anything  from  the  copy  that  lay 
before  him.^^^ 

These  examples  must  suffice  as  indications  of  what 
can  be  learned  from  the  Septuagint  with  regard  to  the 
way  in  which  the  Biblical  books  were  compiled  and 
edited.  I  pass  to  another  point  of  difference  between  the 
Greek  and  Hebrew  Bibles,  which  raises  the  question, 
what  books  were  accepted  by  the  Jews  as  sacred  Scrip- 
tures ;  at  w^hat  date  the  list  of  canonical  books  was 
closed  ;  and  what  were  the  principles  on  which  the  list 
was  formed. 

The  Hebrew  Bible  has  twenty-fom'  books,  arranged 
in  three  great  sections — the  Law,  the  Prophets,  and  the 
Hagiographa.  The  first  section  is  the  Pentateuch,  or,  as 
the  Hebrews  call  it,  the  "  Five  Fifths  of  the  Law."  The 
second  section  has  two  subdivisions,  the  prophetical 
histories,  or  "Earlier  Prophets,"  and  the  prophetic 
books  proper,  which  the  Hebrews  call  the  "  Later 
Prophets."  Each  of  these  subdivisions  contains  four 
books ;  for  the  Hebrews  count  but  one  book  of  Samuel 
and  one  of  Kings,  and  the  Twelve  Minor  Proj^hets  are 


LECT.  V.  THE  HEBREW  BIBLE.  131 

reckoned  as  one  book.  Tlie  third  section  of  the  Hebrew 
Bible  consists  of  what  are  called  the  Hagiographa,  or 
"  Ketubim,"  that  is  [sacred]  writings.  At  the  head  of 
these  stand  three  poetical  books, — Psalms,  Proverbs,  and 
Job.  Then  come  the  five  small  books  of  Canticles, 
Euth,  Lamentations,  Ecclesiastes,  and  Esther,  which  the 
Hebrews  name  the  Megilloth,  or  "  rolls."  They  have 
this  name  because  they  alone  among  the  Hagiographa 
were  used  on  certain  annual  occasions  in  the  service  of 
the  synagogue,  and  for  this  purpose  were  written  each 
in  a  separate  volume.  Last  of  all,  at  the  end  of  the 
Hebrew  Bible,  stand  Daniel,  Ezra  with  Nehemiah 
(forming  a  single  book),  and  the  Chronicles.  As  the 
contents  of  these  books  are  historical  and  prophetical, 
we  should  naturally  have  expected  to  find  them  in  the 
section  of  Prophets.  The  reason  why  they  hold  a 
lower  place  will  fall  to  be  examined  later.  This 
number  of  twenty-four  books,  and  the  division  into  the 
Law,  the  Prophets,  and  the  Hagiographa,  were  perfectly 
fixed  during  the  Talmudic  period,  that  is,  from  the 
third  to  the  sixth  century  of  our  era.  The  order  in 
each  division  was  to  some  extent  variable.  The  number 
of  twenty-four  books  is  first  found  in  the  Second  (or 
Fourth)  Book  of  Esdras,  towards  the  close  of  the  first 
Christian  century.  ^^^ 

Another  division  into  twenty-two  books  is  adopted 
in  the  earliest  extant  list  of  the  contents  of  the  Hebrew 
Bible,  that  given  by  Josephus  in  his  first  book  against 
Apion,  chap.  viii.     The  same  scheme  appears  to  have 


132  CANON  OF  THE  lect.  v. 

been  adopted  in  tlie  Book  of  Jubilees,  and  was  still 
familiar  in  the  time  of  Jerome,  who  prefers  to  reckon 
twenty-two  books,  joining  Euth  to  Judges,  and  Lament- 
ations to  Jeremiah ;  although  he  knows  also  the 
Talmudic  enumeration  of  twenty-four  books,  and  a 
third  scheme  which  reckons  twenty- seven,  dividing 
Samuel,  Kings,  Chronicles,  and  Ezra-Nehemiah,  as  is 
done  in  our  modern  Bibles,  and  separating  Jeremiah 
from  Lamentations.  It  is  proper  to  observe  that  the 
scheme  of  twenty -two  books  is  conformed  to  the 
number  of  letters  in  the  Hebrew  alphabet.  Jerome 
draws  a  parallel  between  this  arrangement  and  the 
alphabetical  acrostics  in  the  Psalms,  Lamentations,  and 
Proverbs  xxxi.  9-31,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
it  is  artificial.^"^^ 

It  is  often  taken  for  granted  that  the  list  of  Old 
Testament  books  was  quite  fixed  in  Palestine  at  the 
time  of  our  Lord,  and  that  the  Bible  acknowledged  by 
Jesus  was  precisely  identical  with  our  own.  But  it 
must  be  remembered  that  this  is  only  an  inference  back 
from  the  list  of  Josephus  published  at  the  very  end  of 
the  first  century.  Before  this  date  we  have  no  cata- 
logue of  the  sacred  books.  The  nearest  approach  to  one 
is  the  panegyric  on  the  famous  men  of  Israel  in  Eccle- 
siasticus  xliv.-L,  in  which  authors  are  expressly  in- 
cluded. The  writer  takes  up  the  Pentateuch,  Joshua, 
Judges,  Samuel,  Kings,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  and 
the  twelve  Minor  Prophets  in  order.  He  also  mentions 
the  psalms  of  David,  and  the  songs,  parables,  and  pro- 


LECT.  V.  OLD  TESTAMENT.  133 

verbs  of  Solomon.  Daniel  and  Esther  are  passed  over 
in  silence,  and  Nehemiah  is  mentioned  without  Ezra. 
Neither  Philo  nor  the  New  Testament  enables  us  to 
make  up  a  complete  list  of  Old  Testament  books,  for 
there  are  some  of  the  Hagiographa  (Esther,  Canticles, 
Ecclesiastes)  which  are  quoted  neither  by  the  apostles 
nor  by  their  Alexandrian  contemporary.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  any  books  were 
received  in  the  time  of  Christ  which  have  now  fallen 
out  of  the  Canon. 

When  we  turn  to  the  Septuagint  we  find,  in  the 
first  place,  a  very  different  arrangement  of  the  books. 
There  is  no  division  into  Law,  Prophets,  and  Hagio- 
grapha ;  but  the  Law  and  the  historical  books  come  first, 
the  poetical  and  didactic  books  follow,  and  the  prophets 
stand  at  the  end  as  in  our  English  Bibles.  But  there 
is  another  difference.  Interspersed  through  the  books 
of  the  Hebrew  Canon,  MSS.  and  editions  of  the  Septua- 
gint contain  certain  additional  writings  which  w^e  call 
Apocrypha.  The  Apocrypha  of  the  Septuagint  are 
not  precisely  identical  with  those  given  in  the  English 
Authorised  Version.  The  apocal}^tic  book  called  Second 
(or  Fourth)  Esdras  is  not  extant  in  Greek.  The  Prayer 
of  Manasseh  is  not  in  all  editions  of  the  Septuagint,  but 
is  found  in  the  collection  of  hymns  or  canticles  which 
some  MSS.  append  to  the  Psalms.  All  our  MSS.  of 
the  LXX.  are  of  Christian  origin,  and  these  Canticles 
comprise  the  Magnificat  and  other  New  Testament 
hymns.     On  the  other  hand,  the  Septuagint  reckons 

r 


134  APOCRYPHA.  lect.  v. 

four  books  of  Maccabees,  while  the  English  Apocrypha 
have  only  two. 

The  additional  books  contained  in  the  Septuagint 
may  be  divided  into  three  classes  : — 

I.  Books  translated  from  the  Hebrew.  Of  these 
1  Maccabees  and  Ecclesiasticus  were  still  extant  in 
Hebrew  in  the  time  of  Jerome,  and  the  books  of  Tobit 
and  Judith  were  translated  or  corrected  by  him  from 
Aramaic  copies.  Baruch,  in  his  day,  was  no  longer 
current  among  the  Hebrews. 

II.  Books  originally  composed  in  Greek  by  Hellen- 
istic Jews,  such  as  the  Second  Book  of  Maccabees,  the 
principal  part  of  which  is  an  epitome  of  a  larger  work 
by  Jason  of  Gyrene,  and  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  which, 
though  it  professes  to  be  the  work  of  the  Hebrew 
monarch,  is  plainly  the  production  of  an  Alexandrian 
Jew  trained  in  the  philosophy  of  his  time. 

III.  Books  based  on  translations  from  the  canonical 
books,  but  expanded  and  embellished  with  arbitrary 
and  fabulous  additions.  In  the  Greek  book  of  Esther 
the  "  Additions  "  given  in  the  English  Apocrypha  are 
an  integral  part  of  the  text.  Similarly,  the  Septua- 
gint Daniel  embodies  Susanna,  the  Song  of  the  Three 
Children,  and  the  Story  of  Bel  and  the  Dragon.  1  Esdras 
is  based  on  extracts  from  Chronicles,  Ezra,  and  ISTehe- 
miah,  but  treats  the  text  with  great  licence,  and  adds 
the  fabulous  history  of  Zerubbabel. 

The  style  of  literature  to  which  this  third  class  of 
Apocrypha  belongs  is  perfectly  familiar  to  students  of 


LECT.  V.  MIDRASH.  135 


the  later  Jewish  literature.  We  possess  many  Jewish 
books  of  similar  character  containing  popular  reproduc- 
tions of  the  canonical  books  interwoven  with  fabulous 
additions.  This  kind  of  literature  is  a  branch  of  the 
Midrash,  or  treatment  of  the  sacred  books  for  purposes 
of  popular  edification.  It  seems  to  have  had  its  origin 
in  the  Synagogue,  where  the  early  Meturgemans  and 
preachers  did  not  confine  themselves  to  a  faithful  repro- 
duction of  Bible  teaching,  but  added  all  manner  of 
Haggada,  ethical  and  fabulous,  according  to  the  taste  of 
the  time.  But  in  Palestine  the  Uaggadic  Midrash  was 
usually  kept  distinct  from  the  text,  and  handed  down 
either  orally  or  in  separate  books.  In  Alexandria,  on 
the  contrary,  the  Jews  seem  to  have  been  content,  in 
certain  instances,  to  receive  books  through  a  Midrash 
without  possessing  an  exact  version  of  the  original 
text. 

From  the  fact  that  the  Apocrypha  stand  side  by  side 
•^^ith  the  canonical  books  in  the  MSS.  and  editions  of 
the  Septuagint,  some  have  leaped  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  Canon  of  the  Alexandrian  Jews  contained  all  these 
books,  or,  in  other  words,  that  they  were  recognised  in 
Alexandria  as  being  divine  and  inspired  in  the  same 
sense  as  the  Law,  the  Prophets,  and  the  Psalms.  That 
conclusion,  however,  is  a  very  hasty  one.  There  are 
several  reasons  which  prevent  us  from  drawing  such 
a  rapid  inference.  In  the  first  place,  we  observe  that 
the  number  of  Apocrjrphal  books  is  not  identical  in  aU 
copies,  and  that  some  of  the  books  are  found  in  two 


136  FLUCTUATIONS  lect.  v. 

recensions  with  very  considerable  variations  of  form/''^ 
This  is  a  proof  that  there  was  no  fixed  canon  upon  the 
subject,  and  establishes  a  parallel  between  the  place  of 
the  Apocrypha  in  MSS.  of  the  Old  Testament  and  the 
occurrence  in  New  Testament  MSS.  of  a  varying  number 
of  such  books  as  the  Shepherd  and  the  Epistles  of 
Barnabas  and  Clement,  which  never  enjoyed  undisputed 
canonical  authority  in  the  Christian  Church,  though 
they  had  a  certain  ecclesiastical  position  in  particular 
districts.  In  the  second  place,  all  our  manuscripts  of 
the  Septuagint  are  of  Christian  origin.  The  presence 
of  an  Apocryphon  in  a  Christian  MS.  shows  that  it  had 
a  certain  measure  of  recognition  in  the  Church,  but  does 
not  prove  that  full  canonical  authority  was  ascribed  to 
it  in  the  Synagogue.  Again,  in  the  third  place,  the 
books  must  have  been  current  one  by  one  before  they 
were  collected  into  a  single  volume.  We  learn  from 
the  prologue  to  Ecclesiasticus  and  the  subscription  to 
the  Apocryphal  book  of  Esther  that  some  of  them  at 
least  were  translated  by  private  enterprise  without 
having  any  official  sanction.  Whatever  position,  then, 
they  ultimately  attained,  they  were  not  translated  as 
part  of  an  official  Canon.  And  finally,  Philo,  the  greatest 
of  Jewish  Hellenists,  who  flourished  in  the  time  of  our 
Lord,  knew  the  Apocrypha  indeed,  for  he  seems  some- 
times to  borrow  the  turn  of  a  phrase  from  them,  but  he 
never  quotes  from  them,  much  less  uses  them  for  the 
proof  of  doctrine  as  he  habitually  uses  most  of  the 
books  in  our  Old  Testament.     There  are,  then,  sufficient 


LECT.  V.  IN  THE  CANON.  137 

reasons  for  hesitating  to  believe  that  the  Alexandrian 
Jews  received  all  these  books  as  authoritative,  in  the 
same  sense  as  the  Law  and  the  Prophets.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  are  bound  to  explain  how  such  books 
ever  came  to  stand  so  closely  associated  with  the  canoni- 
cal books  as  they  do  in  our  Greek  copies.  If  the  line  of 
demarcation  between  canonical  and  uncanonical  books 
had  been  sharply  fixed,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  they  could 
have  got  into  the  Septuagint  at  all.  And  how  did  it 
come  to  pass  that  certain  of  the  Hagiographa  were  not 
used  in  Alexandria  in  their  canonical  form,  but  only  in 
the  shape  of  Haggadic  reproductions,  like  the  Greek 
Esther  and  Daniel  ?  These  phenomena  point  to  a  time 
when  the  idea  of  canonicity  was  not  yet  fixed,  and  when 
certain  books,  even  of  the  Hebrew  canon,  were  only 
pushing  their  way  gradually  towards  universal  recog- 
nition. The  state  of  the  case  is  best  illustrated  by  the 
fact  already  referred  to,  that  some  of  the  oldest  MSS.  of 
the  New  Testament  contain,  in  addition  to  the  books  now 
received,  such  writings  as  the  Shepherd  and  the  Epistles 
of  Barnabas  and  Clement.  Before  the  canon  of  the 
New  Testament  was  fixed,  several  such  books  enjoyed 
considerable  authority  in  different  Churches.  They 
were  not  accepted  books,  which,  all  over  the  Church, 
were  undoubtedly  received  as  authoritative,  like  the 
Gospels  and  the  great  Epistles  of  Paul;  but  they  had  a 
certain  respect  paid  to  them,  and  in  some  parts  of  the 
Cliristian  Church  were  read  at  the  public  meetings  for 
worship.      Something  of  the   same  sort,  surely,  must 


138  VALUE  OF  lect.  v. 

have  existed  in  the  time  when  the  Septuagint  was 
formed;  otherwise  these  books,  not  admitted  over  the 
whole  Jewish  world,  would  not  have  occurred  in  ancient 
copies  alongside  of  books  of  undoubted  authority.  But, 
again,  at  the  period  when  books  like  the  Epistle  of 
Barnabas  had  not  been  definitely  relegated  to  a  lower 
place,  certain  New  Testament  books  now  held  as  canoni- 
cal were  still  more  or  less  disputed.  In  Alexandria,  in 
like  manner,  such  a  book  as  Esther  cannot  have  been 
accepted  as  beyond  dispute,  for  instead  of  a  proper 
translation  we  find  only  a  Midrash,  circulating  in  two 
varying  recensions,  and  not  claiming  by  its  subscription 
to  be  more  than  a  private  book  brought  to  Alexandria 
in  the  fourth  year  of  Ptolemy  and  Cleopatra  by  one 
Dositheos,  who  called  himself  a  priest. 

These  facts  force  us  to  inquire  upon  what  principles 
the  Jews  separated  the  sacred  writings  from  ordinary 
books.  But,  before  doing  this,  let  me  ask  you  rather  to 
look  at  the  Apocrypha  as  they  appear  to  us  in  the  light 
of  modern  historical  research.  All  the  books  of  the 
Apocrypha  are  comparatively  modern.  There  is  none 
of  them,  on  the  most  favourable  computation,  which  can 
be  supposed  to  be  older  than  the  latest  years  of  the 
Persian  empire.  They  belong,  therefore,  to  the  age 
when  the  last  great  religious  movement  of  the  Old 
Testament  under  Ezra  had  passed  away — when  pro- 
phecy had  died  out,  and  the  nation  had  settled  down  to 
live  under  the  Law,  looking  for  guidance  in  religion, 
not   to   a  continuance  of  new  revelation,  but  to  the 


LECT.  V.  THE  APOCRYPHA.  139 

^vTitten  Word,  and  to  the  interpretations  of  the  Scribes. 
To  place  these  books  on  the  same  footing  with  the  Law 
and  the  Prophets,  as  is  done  by  the  Church  of  Rome,  is 
quite  impossible  to  the  historical  student.  We  receive 
the  Bible  as  the  record  of  revelation.  Now,  if  we  look 
at  revelation,  not  from  its  Divine  side,  but  from  a 
human  point  of  view,  as  a  phenomenon  in  history,  we 
may  lay  down  the  principle  that  revelation  manifests 
itseK  among  men  in  the  production  of  new  religious 
truths  and  original  spiritual  experiences.  The  record 
of  revelation,  then,  is  the  record  of  the  period  in  which 
the  religion  of  Israel  continued  to  grow,  and  develop 
new  principles — to  gain  new  insight  into  the  ways  of 
God  with  man.  This  growth  continued  during  the 
long  centuries  in  which  spiritual  truth,  in  the  hands  of 
the  prophets,  struggled  for  mastery  against  the  heathen- 
ism of  the  great  mass  of  the  nation — against  the  con- 
stant inclination  of  the  whole  people  to  mingle  with 
the  Gentiles  around  them,  and  fall  back  into  their  false 
worship.  After  the  time  of  Ezra,  the  battle  was  over, 
and  the  victory  was  won.  The  religious  life  of  Israel 
became  stereotyped,  and  no  fresh  religious  start  was 
made,  unless,  perhaps,  in  a  very  modified  sense,  at  the 
rising  under  the  Maccabees  against  the  attempt  of  the 
Syrian  Greeks  to  substitute  heathenism  for  the  religion 
of  Israel.  The  spiritual  religion  could  make  no  further 
progress  so  long  as  it  was  limited  by  national  forms 
and  a  local  attachment  to  the  earthly  temple.  Further 
revelation,  wliich  should  be  an  Old  Testament  revela- 


140  CLOSE  OF  THE  AGE  lect.  v. 

tion,  was  simply  impossible.  The  spirit  of  prophecy 
could  not  reappear  until  Christianity  broke  through  the 
national  barrier  of  the  old  covenant,  and  transformed 
the  religion  of  Israel  into  a  religion  for  all  mankind, 
freed  from  every  limitation  of  place  and  of  nationality. 
y  Let  me  guard  this  argument  against  a  possible  mis- 
conception. When  I  say  that  the  record  of  revelation 
is  the  record  of  the  age  of  religious  productivity  that 
closed  with  the  thorough  establishment  and  general 
acceptance  of  the  reform  of  Ezra  which  made  relapse 
into  heathenism  impossible,  and  with  the  rise  of  the 
Scribes  who  taught  as  mere  interpreters  of  the  past, 
and  not  as  men  having  authority,  we  are  not  necessarily 
to  conclude  that  a  book  written  after  this  date  has  no 
claim  to  be  part  of  the  historical  record  of  revelation. 
For  example,  the  book  of  Nehemiah,  or,  as  we  have 
now  learned  to  call  it,  in  accordance  with  the  Hebrew 
usage,  the  joint  book  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  which  in  all 
probability  was  also  one  book  with  Chronicles,  carries 
down  the  list  of  high  priests  as  far  as  Jaddua,  who  was 
in  office  at  the  time  of  Alexander  (Neh.  xii.  11).  The 
book,  therefore,  was  written,  at  the  earliest,  at  the  very 
end  of  the  Persian  period,  though  it  incorporates  earlier 
documents,  such  as  the  autobiography  of  Ezra  and  the 
memoir  of  Nehemiah.  In  its  present  form,  then,  the 
book  may  be  as  late  as  some  of  the  earliest  Apocrypha. 
But  the  account  which  it  gives  us  of  the  reforms  of 
Ezra  and  Nehemiah  is  a  necessary  part  of  the  history 
of  the  last  great  step  in  the  victory  of  spiritual  religion 


LECT.  V.  OF  REVELATION.  141 

in  Israel,  without  which  the  record  of  revelation  would 
not  be  complete.  No  such  thing  can  be  said  in  favour 
of  the  Apocrypha.  They  were  not  only  written  after 
the  end  of  the  living  progress  of  the  Old  Testament  reve- 
lation, but  their  contents  add  nothing  to  our  knowledge 
of  that  progress,  and  therefore,  on  a  purely  historical 
argument,  and  without  going  into  any  knotty  theological 
questions  as  to  the  precise  nature  of  inspiration,  we 
can  say  on  broad  grounds  of  common  sense  that  these 
books  must  not  be  included  in  the  Bible  record,  but 
that  their  value  is  simply  that  of  documents  for  the 
histoiy  of  the  connection  of  the  Old  and  the  New  Testa- 
ment. They  belong  to  a  new  literature  which  rose  in 
Judaea  after  the  cessation  of  prophetic  originality,  when 
the  law  and  the  tradition  were  all  in  all,  when  there  was 
no  man  to  speak  with  authority  truths  that  he  had 
received  direct  from  God,  but  the  whole  intellect  of 
Israel  was  either  concentrated  on  the  development  of 
legal  Halacha,  or,  in  men  of  more  poetical  imagination, 
exercised  itself  in  restating  and  illustrating  the  old 
principles  of  religion  in  ethical  poetry,  like  that  of 
Ecclesiasticus,  or  in  romance  and  fable  of  a  religious 
complexion,  like  the  books  of  Judith  and  Tobit.  Hal- 
acha, Midrash,  and  Haggada  became  the  forms  of  all 
literary  effort ;  or  if  any  man  tried  a  bolder  flight,  and 
sought  for  his  work  a  place  of  higher  authority,  he  did 
so  by  assuming  the  name  of  some  ancient  worthy.  This 
last  class  of  pseudepigraphic  works,  as  they  are  called, 
consists  largely  of  pseudoprophetic  books  in  apocalyptic 
form,  like  2  (4)  Esdras.^'^ 


142  CESSATION  OF  lect.  v.  \ 

We  have  satisfied  ourselves,  then,  by  historical  argu- 
ments, that  there  is  a  distinct  line  of  demarcation  between 
the  Apocrypha  and  the  books  which  present  the  record 
of  that  living  progress  of  revelation  which  came  to  rest 
in  the  work  of  Ezra.     But  how  far  was  this  understood  \ 

by  those  who  separated  out  the  books  of  our  Hebrew 
Bible  as  canonical,  and  rejected  all  others  ?     The  Jews  \ 

had  a  dim  sort  of  consciousness  after  the  time  of  Ezra  i 

that  the  age  of  revelation  was  past,  and  that  the  age  of 
tradition  had  begun.  The  feeling  that  new  revelation 
had  almost  ceased  is  found  even  in  the  latest  prophecies  i 

of  the  Old  Testament.     In  Zechariah  xiii.  the  prophet  | 

predicts  the  near  approach  of  a  time  when  every  one  | 

who  calls  himself  a  prophet,  and  puts  on  a  prophet's 
garment,  shall  be  at  once  recognised  as  a  deceiver,  and 
his  own  father  and  mother  shall  be  the  first  to  denounce 
the  imposture.     And  in  the  last  verse  of  Malachi — the  : 

last  echo,  as  it  were,  of  the  prophetic  literature  of  the  j 

Old  Testament — Malachi  does  not  look  forward  to  a  con-  ' 

stant  succession  of  prophets,  such  as  is  foretold  in 
Deuteronomy.     He  sees  no  hope  for  the  corrupt  state  \ 

of  his  times,  except  that  the  old  prophet  Elijah  shall 
return  to  turn  the  hearts  of  the  fathers  to  the  children,  j 

and  the  hearts  of  the  children  to  the  fathers,  lest  God  i 

come  and  smite  the  earth  with  a  curse.     As  time  rolled  i 

on,  the  feeling  that  there  was  no  new  revelation  among  j 

the  people  became  still  more  strong.     In  1  Maccabees  | 

ix.  27  we  read  that  "  there  was  great  sorrow  in  Israel,  , 

such  as  there  had  not  been  since  the  days  that  no  pro-  j 


LECT.  V.  PROPHECY.  143 

phet  had  appeared  among  them;"  and,  according  to 
Josephus,  the  strict  succession  of  prophets  ended  in 
the  reign  of  Artaxerxes  Longimanus.  The  Scribes 
thoroughly  sympathised  with  this  view.  Even  when 
they  made  innovations,  they  always  professed  to  do  so 
as  mere  interpreters,  claiming  nothing  more  than  to  re- 
store, to  expound,  or  to  fence  in,  the  law  given  by  Moses. 
Their  position  is  aptly  described  in  the  phrase  of  the 
New  Testament,  where  Jesus  is  said  to  teach  "  as  one 
having  authority,  and  not  as  the  scribes."  But,  while 
the  Jews  had  a  general  feeling  that  the  age  of  revelation 
w^as  past,  they  had  no  such  clear  perception  of  the 
reason  of  the  change  as  we  can  have  in  the  light  of  the 
New  Testament;  for  they  continued  to  look,  not  for  a 
new  revelation  superseding  the  old  covenant,  but  for  the 
reappearance  of  prophets  working  in  the  service  of  the 
law  and  its  ritual.  In  1  Maccabees  iv.  46  they  put 
aside  the  stones  of  the  polluted  altar,  not  knowing  what 
to  do  with  them,  but  waiting  till  a  prophet  shall  arise  in 
Israel  to  tell  it ;  and  again  (chap.  xiv.  41),  they  agree  to 
make  Simon  high  priest  until  such  time  as  a  true  prophet 
shall  appear.  The  revival  of  prophecy  was  still  looked 
for,  but  the  idea  of  the  function  of  prophecy  was  nar- 
rowed to  things  of  no  moment.  Malachi  had  looked  for 
a  prophet  to  turn  the  hearts  of  the  fathers  to  the  child- 
ren, and  the  hearts  of  the  children  to  the  fathers,  lest 
God  come  and  smite  the  earth  with  a  curse.  In  the  days 
of  the  Maccabees  the  true  nature  of  prophecy  had  been 
so  far  forgotten  that  it  was  thought  that  the  business  of 


144  JEWISH  THEORY  lect.  v. 

a  prophet  was  to  tell  what  should  be  done  with  the 
stones  of  a  polluted  altar,  or  which  family  was  to  hold 
the  dignity  of  the  high  priesthood.  Where  the  meaning 
of  prophecy  was  so  superficially  conceived,  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  a  sporadic  reappearance  of  prophets  was 
not  thought  impossible.  Josephus,  in  a  curious  passage 
of  his  Jewish  War,  says  that  John  Hyrcanus  was  the 
only  man  who  united  in  his  person  the  three  highest 
distinctions,  being  at  once  ruler  of  his  nation,  and  high 
priest,  and  gifted  with  prophecy ;  "  for  the  Divinity  so 
conversed  with  liim  that  he  was  cognisant  of  all  things 
that  were  to  come"  {B.  J.,  Bk.  i.  chap.  ii.  8 ;  compare  the 
similar  expressions  of  John  xi.  51).  Moreover,  although 
the  Scribes  in  general  did  not  consider  that  they  had 
the  spirit  of  revelation,  we  find  the  author  of  Ecclesias- 
ticus  (chap.  xxiv.  31,  32)  claiming  for  his  book  an  almost 
prophetic  authority  :  "I  w^ill  yet  make  instruction  to 
shine  as  the  morning,  and  will  send  forth  her  light  afar 
off.  I  will  pour  forth  doctrine  as  prophecy,  and  leave 
it  unto  eternal  generations"  (comp.  i.  30,  li.  13  seg). 
The  author  is  fully  conscious  that  his  whole  wisdom 
is  derived  from  the  study  of  the  law  (xxiv.  30).  He 
does  not  pretend  that  he  or  other  scholars  are  the 
vehicles  of  new  truths  of  revelation  (chaps,  xxxviii. 
xxxix.);  but  he  is  evidently  not  conscious  that  this 
circumstance  constitutes  an  absolute  difference  between 
the  teaching  which,  by  his  own  admission,  was  nothing 
more  than  an  enforcement  of  the  principles  of  the  law 
of  Moses,  and  the  old  creative  prophecy  of  Isaiah  or 


LECT.  V.  OF  RE  VELA  TION.  1 45 

Jeremiah.  This  uncleamess  of  view  rests  upon  an  error 
which  not  only  was  fatal  to  the  Jews,  but  has  continued 
to  exercise  a  pernicious  influence  even  on  Christian 
theology  down  to  our  own  day.  The  Jews,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  identified  religion  with  the  Law,  and  the 
Law  with  the  words  of  Moses. 

All  revelation  was  held  to  be  comprised  in  the 
Torah.  According  to  the  Son  of  Sirach,  the  sacred 
Wisdom,  created  before  the  world  and  enduring  to  all 
eternity,  which  is  established  in  Sion  and  bears  sway  in 
Jerusalem,  the  all-sufficient  food  of  man's  spiritual  life, 
is  identical  with  the  book  of  the  Covenant  of  God  most 
High,  the  Law  enjoined  by  Moses  (Ecclesiasticus  xxiv.). 
The  secrets  of  this  law  are  infinite,  and  all  man's  wis- 
dom is  a  stream  derived  from  this  unfailing  source. 
This  doctrine  of  the  pre-existent  and  eternal  Law, 
comprising  within  itself  the  sum  of  all  wisdom  and 
all  possible  revelation,  runs  through  the  whole  Jewish 
literature.  It  is  brought  out  in  a  very  interesting  way 
in  the  old  Jewish  commentaries  on  Deut.  xxx.  12: — 
"  The  law  is  not  in  the  heavens."  "  Say  not,"  says  the 
commentary,  "  another  Moses  shall  arise  and  bring 
another  law  from  heaven  :  there  is  no  law  left  in 
heaven;"  that  is,  according  to  the  position  of  the 
Jews,  the  law  of  Moses  contained  the  whole  revelation 
of  God's  goodness  and  grace  which  had  been  given 
or  which  ever  could  be  given.^'^ 

What  place  then  was  left  for  the  Prophets,  the 
Psalms,  and  the  other  books?     They  were  inspired  and 


146  THE  TO  RAH  AND  lect.  v. 

authoritative  interpretations  and  applications  of  the  law 
of  Moses,  and  nothing  more.  They  were,  therefore, 
simply  the  links  in  tradition  between  the  time  of  Moses 
and  the  time  of  Ezra  and  the  Scribes.  And  so  clearly 
was  this  the  Jewish  notion,  that  the  same  word — 
Kcibhala,  doctrine  traditionally  received — is  applied 
indifferently  to  all  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament 
except  the  Pentateuch,  and  to  the  oral  tradition  of  the 
Scribes.  The  Pentateuch  alone  is  Mikra,  "  reading,"  or, 
as  we  should  call  it,  "Scripture."  The  Prophets,  the 
Psalms,  and  the  rest  of  the  Old  Testament,  in  common 
with  the  oral  tradition  of  the  Scribes,  are  mere  Kab- 
bala  or  traditional  doctrine.  From  these  premisses  it 
necessarily  follows  that  the  other  books  are  inferior  to 
the  Law.  This  consequence  was  drawn  with  full  logi- 
cal stringency.  The  Law  and  the  Prophets  were  not 
written  on  the  same  roll,  and,  in  accordance  with  a 
legal  principle  which  forbade  a  less  holy  thing  to  be 
purchased  with  the  price  of  one  more  holy,  the  Mishna 
directs  that  a  copy  of  the  other  books  may  no  more  be 
bought  with  the  price  of  a  Pentateuch  than  part  of  a 
street  may  be  bought  with  the  price  of  a  synagogue.^^'^ 

I  need  not  interrupt  the  argument  to  prove  at 
length  that  this  is  a  view  which  cannot  be  received  by 
any  Christian.  It  was  refuted,  once  for  all,  by  the 
apostle  Paul  when  he  pointed  out,  in  answer  to  the 
Pharisees  of  his  time,  that  the  permanent  value  of  all 
revelation  lies,  not  in  Law,  but  in  Gospel.  Now,  it  is 
certain  that  the  prophetical  books  are  far  richer  than 


LECT.  V.  OTHER  SCRIPTURES.  147 

the  Law  in  evangelical  elements.  They  contain  a  much 
fuller  declaration  of  those  spiritual  truths  which  consti- 
tute the  permanent  value  of  the  Old  Testament  Eevela- 
tion,  and  a  much  clearer  indication  of  the  nature  of  the 
New  and  Spiritual  Covenant  under  which  we  now  live. 
There  is  more  of  Christ  in  the  Prophets  and  the 
Psalms  than  in  the  Pentateuch,  with  its  legal  ordinances 
and  temporary  precepts  adapted  to  the  hardness  of  the 
people's  hearts ;  and  therefore  no  Christian  can  for  a 
moment  consent  to  accept  that  view  of  the  pre-eminence 
of  the  Law  which  was  to  the  Jews  the  foundation  of 
their  official  doctrine  of  the  canon.  What  then  is  the 
inference  from  these  facts  ?  We  found,  in  Lecture  IL, 
that  the  early  Protestants,  for  reasons  very  intelligible 
at  their  time,  were  content  simply  to  accept  the  Canon 
as  it  came  to  them  through  the  hands  of  the  Jews. 
But  it  appears  that,  in  defining  the  number  and  limits 
of  the  sacred  books,  the  Jewish  doctors  started  with  a 
false  idea  of  the  test  and  measure  of  sacredness.  Their 
tradition,  therefore,  does  not  conclusively  determine  the 
question  of  the  Canon  ;  and  we  cannot  permanently 
acquiesce  in  it  without  subjecting  their  conclusions  to 
a  fresh  examination  by  sounder  tests. 

And  here  let  me  say,  in  one  word,  anticipating  the 
fuller  discussion  to  follow  in  the  next  Lecture,  that,  as 
we  find  it  a  matter  of  thankfulness  that  the  Scribes  did 
not  attempt  to  make  a  critical  text  of  Scripture,  so  it  is 
a  matter  of  thankfulness  for  us  that  they  did  not,  till  a 
very  late  date,  set  themselves  to  establish  an  authorita- 


us  HISTORY  OF  lect.  v. 

tive  Canon  of  Scripture.  A  Canon,  deliberately  franied 
on  the  principles  of  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  could 
hardly  have  been  satisfactory  ;  but  in  reality  the 
essential  elements  in  the  Canon  were  not  determined  by 
official  authority.  The  great  mass  of  the  Old  Testament 
books  gained  their  canonical  position  because  they  com- 
mended themselves  in  practice  to  the  experience  of  the 
Old  Testament  Church  and  the  spiritual  discernment  of 
the  godly  in  Israel.  For  the  religious  life  of  Israel  was 
truer  than  the  teaching  of  the  Pharisees.  The  Old 
Testament  religion  was  the  religion  of  revelation  ;  and 
the  highest  spiritual  truths  then  known  did  not  dwell 
in  the  Jewish  people  without  producing,  in  practical 
life,  a  higher  type  of  religious  experience,  and  a  truer 
insight  into  spiritual  things,  than  was  embodied  in  the 
doctrines  of  the  Scribes. 

The  judgment  which  theological  prejudice  might 
pass  on  the  several  books  of  the  record  of  revelation 
was  controlled  by  the  practical  experience  of  those  who 
found  in  the  Scriptures  food  for  their  own  daily  life  : 
and  so,  in  God's  providence,  a  result  was  attained  which 
rested  on  sounder  principles  than  those  of  the  schools. 
Throughout  the  history  of  the  Church,  it  has  always 
been  found  that  the  silent  experience  of  the  pious 
people  of  God  has  been  truer,  and  has  led  the  Church 
in  a  safer  path,  than  the  public  decrees  of  those  who 
claim  to  be  authoritative  leaders  of  theological  thought. 


i-ECT.  VI.  THE  CANON,  149 


LECTUEE   VI. 

THE   HISTORY   OF   THE   CANON. 

In  resuming  the  subject  of  the  Old  Testament  Canon,  I 
must  again  direct  your  attention  to  the  testimonies 
cited  in  last  Lecture  which  mark  the  epoch  at  which  tlie 
Bible  of  the  Jews  in  Palestine  had  attained  the  fixed 
dimensions  in  which  w^e  now  possess  it.  The  Fourth  (or 
Second)  Book  of  Esdras  speaks  of  twenty-four  publicly 
acknowledged  books,  and  the  Book  of  Jubilees,  accord- 
ing to  Syncellus  and  Cedrenus,  reckoned  twenty-two. 
These  testimonies,  however,  are  not  certain.  The  extant 
text  of  the  Jubilees  does  not  contain  a  reference  to  the 
twenty-two  books  in  the  context  where  the  Byzantines 
claim  to  have  read  it,  and  the  number  of  the  sacred  books 
is  lacking  in  some  recensions  of  the  text  of  Esdras.^^^ 
The  first  unambiguous  evidence  as  to  the  close  of  the 
canon  is  contained  in  the  list  of  Josephus,  composed 
towards  the  close  of  the  first  century.  We  can  affirm 
with  practical  certainty  that  the  twenty -two  books  of 
Josephus  are  those  of  our  present  Hebrew  Canon ;  but 
the  force  of  this  evidence  is  disguised  by  the  controver- 
sial purpose  of  the  writer,  which  leads  him  to  put  his 
facts  in  a  false  light.     The  aim  of  Josephus  in  his  work 


150  yOSEPHUS  AND  lect.  vi. 

against  Apion  is  to  vindicate  the  antiquity  of  the  Hebrew 
nation,  and  the  credibility  of  its  history  as  recorded  in 
his  own  Archmology.  In  this  connection  he  maintains 
that  the  Oriental  nations  kept  official  annals  long  before 
the  Greeks,  and  that  the  Jews  in  particular  charged 
their  chief  priests  and  prophets  with  the  duty  of  pre- 
serving a  regular  record  of  contemporary  affairs,  not 
permitting  any  private  person  to  meddle  in  the  matter. 
This  official  record  is  contained  in  the  twenty-two  books 
of  the  Old  Testament.  The  older  history,  communi- 
cated by  revelation,  is  found  in  the  Pentateuch  along 
with  the  legal  code.  The  other  books,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  four  containing  hymns  and  precepts  of  life,  which 
may  be  identified  with  the  Psalms,  Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes, 
and  the  Song  of  Solomon,  are  made  to  figure  as  a  con- 
tinuous history  written  by  an  unbroken  succession  of 
prophets,  each  of  whom  recorded  the  events  of  his  own 
time,  down  to  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes  Longimanus,  when 
the  succession  of  prophets  failed,  and  the  sacred  annals 
stopped  short.  As  Josephus  places  Ezra  and  Nehemiah 
under  Xerxes,  and  identifies  his  son  Artaxerxes  with  the 
Ahasuerus  of  Esther,  he  no  doubt  views  Esther  as  the 
latest  canonical  book.  The  number  of  thirteen  pro- 
phetico-historical  books  from  Joshua  to  Esther  is  made 
up  by  reckoning  Job  as  a  history.  As  the  Song  of 
Solomon  figures  as  a  didactic  book,  it  must  have  been 
taken  allegorically.^^^ 

According  to  Josephus,  the  close  of  the  Canon  is 
distinctly  marked  by  the  cessation  of  the  succession  of 


LECT.  VI.  THE  CANON.  151 

prophets  in  the  time  of  Artaxerxes.  On  this  view  there 
never  was  or  could  be  any  discussion  as  to  the  number 
and  limits  of  the  canonical  collection,  which  had  from 
first  to  last  an  official  character.  Each  new  book  was 
^vritten  by  a  man  of  acknowledged  authority,  and  simply 
added  to  the  collection  as  a  new  page  would  be  added 
to  the  royal  annals  of  an  Eastern  kingdom.  It  is  plain 
that  this  view  is  not  in  accordance  with  facts.  The 
older  prophets  were  not  official  historiographers  working 
in  harmony  with  the  priests  for  the  regular  continuance 
of  a  series  of  Temple  annals ;  they  were  often  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  sacred  as  well  as  the  civil  authorities  of 
their  nation.  Jeremiah,  for  example,  was  persecuted 
and  put  in  the  stocks  by  Pashur  the  son  of  Immer, 
priest  and  chief  governor  of  the  Temple.  Again,  it  is 
clear  that  there  was  no  regular  and  unbroken  series 
of  sacred  annals  officially  kept  up  from  the  time  of 
Moses  onwards.  In  the  time  of  Josiah,  the  Law, 
unexpectedly  found  in  the  house  of  the  Lord,  appears 
as  a  thing  that  had  beeai  lost  and  long  forgotten. 
Even  a  glance  at  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  is 
enough  to  refute  the  idea  of  a  regular  succession  of 
prophetic  writers,  each  taking  up  the  history  just 
where  the  last  had  left  it.  In  fact,  Josephus  in  this 
statement  simply  gives  a  turn,  for  his  own  polemical 
purposes,  to  that  theory  of  tradition  wdiich  was  current 
among  the  Pharisees  of  his  time  and  is  clearly  ex- 
pressed at  the  beginning  of  the  treatise  of  the  Mishna 
called  PirM  Ahoth.     In  it  we  read  that  "Moses  re- 


152  HOMOLOGOUMENA  lect.  vi. 

ceived  the  Torah  from  Sinai  and  delivered  it  to  Joshua, 
Joshua  delivered  it  to  the  elders,  the  elders  to  the 
prophets,  and  the  prophets  to  the  men  of  the  Great 
Synagogue,"  from  whom  it  passed  in  turn  to  the  Zugoth, 
as  the  Hebrews  called  them, — that  is,  the  pairs  of  great 
doctors  who,  in  successive  generations,  formed  the  heads 
of  the  Scribes.  This  whole  doctrine  of  the  succession 
of  tradition  is  a  dogmatical  theory,  not  an  historical  fact ; 
and  in  like  manner  Josephus's  account  of  the  Canon  is  a 
theory,  and  a  theory  inconsistent  with  the  fact  that  we 
find  no  complete  formal  catalogue  of  Scriptures  in  earlier 
writers  like  the  son  of  Sirach,  who,  enumerating  the 
literary  worthies  of  his  nation,  had  every  motive  to 
give  a  complete  list,  if  he  had  been  in  a  position  to  do 
so ;  inconsistent  also  with  the  fact  that  questions  as  to 
the  canonicity  of  certain  books  were  stiU  undecided 
within  the  lifetime  of  Josephus  himself. 

But  the  clearest  evidence  that  the  notion  of  can- 
onicity was  not  fully  established  till  long  after  the 
time  of  Artaxerxes  lies  in  the  Septuagint.  The  facts 
discussed  in  last  Lecture  are  not  to  be  explained 
by  saying  that  there  was  one  fixed  Canon  in  Palestine 
and  another  in  Alexandria.  That  would  imply  such  a 
schism  between  the  Hellenistic  and  Palestinian  Jews, 
between  the  Jews  who  spoke  Greek  and  those  who 
read  Hebrew,  as  certainly  did  not  exist,  and  would 
assign  to  the  Apocrypha  an  authority  among  the  for- 
mer which  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  they  ever 
possessed.     The  true  inference  from  the  facts  is,  that 


LECT.  VI.  AND  ANTILEGOMENA.  153 

the  Canon  of  the  Old  Testament  was  of  gradual  forma- 
tion, that  some  books  now  accepted  had  long  a  doubtful 
position,  while  others  were  for  a  time  admitted  to  a 
measure  of  reputation  which  made  the  line  of  demarca- 
tion between  them  and  the  canonical  books  uncertain 
and  fluctuating.  In  short,  we  must  suppose  a  time 
when  the  Old  Testament  Canon  was  passing  through 
the  same  kind  of  history  through  which  we  know  the 
Xew  Testament  Canon  to  have  passed.  In  the  early 
ages  of  the  Christian  Church  we  find  the  books  of  the 
New  Testament  divided  into  the  so-called  Homologou- 
mena,  or  books  universally  acknowledged,  and  the 
Antilegoinena,  or  books  acknowledged  in  some  parts 
of  the  Church  but  spoken  against  in  others.  The 
Homologoumena  included  those  books  which,  either 
from  their  very  nature  or  from  their  early  and  wide 
circulation,  never  could  be  questioned  —  books  of  ad- 
mitted and  undoubted  apostolic  authority,  such  as  the 
Gospels  and  the  great  Epistles  of  Paul.  The  Anti- 
legomena  consisted  of  other  books,  some  of  which  are 
now  in  our  New  Testament,  but  which  for  some  reason 
were  not  from  the  first  broadly  circulated  over  the 
whole  Church.  Along  with  these,  there  were  other 
books,  not  now  held  canonical,  which  in  some  parts  of 
the  Church  were  read  in  public  worship,  and  received 
a  certain  amount  of  reverence.  The  history  of  the 
Canon  unfolds  the  gradual  process  by  which  the  num- 
ber of  AntilegomeTia  was  narrowed;  either  by  the 
Church,  through  all  its  length  and  breadth,  coming  to  be 


i 
154  EZRA  AND  lect.  vi.       | 


persuaded  tliat  some  book  not  at  first  undisputed  was  yet 
worthy  to  be  universally  received  as  apostolic,  or,  con- 
versely, by  the  spread  of  the  conviction  that  other  books, 
which  for  a  time  had  been  used  in  certain  churches,  were 
not  fit  to  be  put  on  a  level  with  the  Gospels  and  the 
great  Epistles.  We  must  suppose  that  a  similar  process 
took  place  with  regard  to  the  books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. About  many  of  them  there  could  be  no  dispute. 
Others  were  Antilegomena — books  spoken  against — 
and  the  number  of  such  Antilegomena,  which  were 
neither  fully  acknowledged  nor  absolutely  rejected,  was 
naturally  a  fluctuating  quantity  up  to  a  comparatively 
late  date,  when  such  a  measure  of  practical  agreement 
had  been  reached  as  to  which  books  were  really  of 
sacred  authority,  that  the  theological  heads  of  the 
nation  could,  without  difficulty,  cut  short  further  dis- 
cussion, and  establish  an  authoritative  list  of  Scriptures. 
The  reason  why  a  greater  number  of  books  of  disputed 
position  is  preserved  in  Greek  than  in  Hebrew  is  that  the 
Kabbins  of  Palestine,  from  the  close  of  the  first  century, 
when  the  Canon  was  definitely  fixed,  sedulously  sup- 
pressed all  Apocrypha,  and  made  it  a  sin  to  read  them. 
This  account  of  the  origin  of  the  Canon  is  natural 
in  itself  and  agrees  with  all  the  facts,  especially  with 
the  circumstance  that  the  canonicity  of  certain  books 
was  a  moot  point  among  Jewish  theologians  till  after 
the  fall  of  the  Temple.  This  fact  gave  no  trouble  to  the 
Jews,  who  accepted  the  decision  of  E.  Akiba  and  his 
compeers  as  of  undisputed  authority.     But  Christian 


THE  CANON.  155 


theology  could  not  give  weight  to  Rabbinical  tradition, 
and  it  is  thus  very  natural  that  many  attempts  have 
been  made  to  prove  that  an  authoritative  Canon  was 
fixed  in  the  days  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  while  the  last 
prophets  still  lived. 

Among  the  ancient  fathers  it  was  a  current  opinion 
that  Ezra  himself  rewrote  by  inspiration  the  whole 
Old  Testament,  which  had  been  destroyed  or  injured  at 
the  time  of  the  Captivity.  The  source  of  this  opinion  is 
a  fable  in  2  (4)  Esdras  xiv.  Esdras,  according  to  this 
story,  prayed  for  the  Holy  Spirit  that  he  might  rewrite 
the  law  that  had  been  burned.  His  prayer  was  granted  ; 
and,  retiring  for  forty  days,  with  five  scribes  to  write  to 
his  dictation,  he  produced  ninety -four  books.  "And 
when  the  forty  days  were  completed,  the  Most  High 
spake,  saying.  Publish  the  first  books  which  thou 
hast  written,  that  the  worthy  and  the  unworthy  may 
read  them ;  but  conserve  the  last  seventy,  and  deliver 
them  to  wise  men  of  thy  people."  To  imderstand  what 
this  means,  we  must  remember  that  this  book  of  Esdras 
professes  to  be  a  genuine  prophecy  of  Ezra  the  scribe. 
The  author  was  aware  that  when  he  produced  his  book, 
which  was  not  written  till  near  the  close  of  the  first 
Christian  century,  it  would  be  necessary  to  meet  the 
objection  that  it  had  never  been  known  before.  Ac- 
cordingly he  and  other  forgers  of  the  same  period  fell 
back  on  the  assertion  that  certain  of  the  sacred  writings 
had  always  been  esoteric  books,  confined  to  a  privileged 
circle.     The  whole  fable  is  directed  to  this  end,  and  is 


156  THE  GREAT  lect.  vi. 

plainly  unwortliy  of  the  slightest  attention.  We  have 
no  right  to  rationalise  it,  as  some  have  done,  and  read 
it  as  a  testimony  that  Ezra  may  at  least  have  collected 
and  edited  the  Old  Testament.  But  no  doubt  the  cur- 
rency wliich  Fourth  Esdras  long  enjoyed  helped  to  fix 
the  impresssion  on  men's  minds  that  in  some  shape 
Ezra  had  a  part  in  settling  the  Canon,  and  drove  them 
to  seek  arguments  for  this  view  in  other  quarters. 

Accordingly  we  find  that  a  new  form  of  the  theoiy 
started  up  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  gained  almost 
undisputed  currency  in  the  Protestant  Churches.  Ac- 
cording to  this  view,  the  Canon  was  completed  by  a 
body  of  men  known  as  the  Great  Synagogue.  The 
Great  Synagogue  plays  a  considerable  part  in  Jewish 
tradition  ;  it  is  represented  as  a  permanent  council, 
tinder  the  presidency  of  Ezra,  wielding  supreme  author- 
ity over  the  Jewish  nation ;  and  a  variety  of  functions 
are  ascribed  to  it.  But  the  tradition  never  said  that  the 
Great  Synagogue  fixed  the  Canon.  That  opinion,  current 
as  it  once  was,  is  a  mere  conjecture  of  Elias  Levita,  a 
Jewish  scholar  contemporary  with  Luther.  Not  only 
so,  but  we  now  know  that  the  whole  idea  that  there 
ever  was  a  body  called  the  Great  Synagogue  holding  rule 
in  the  Jewish  nation  is  pure  fiction.  It  has  been  proved 
in  the  clearest  manner  that  the  origin  of  the  legend  of 
the  Great  Synagogue  lies  in  the  account  given  in  Neh. 
viii.-x.  of  the  great  convocation  which  met  at  Jerusalem 
and  subscribed  the  covenant  to  observe  the  law.  It 
was  therefore  a  meeting,  and  not  a  permanent  authority. 


LECT.  VI.  SYNAGOGUE.  157 

It  met  once  for  all,  and  everything  that  is  told  about  it, 
except  what  we  read  in  Nehemiah,  is  pure  fable  of  the 
later  Jews/"^ 

Two,  then,  of  the  traditions  which  seem  to  refer  the 
whole  Canon  to  Ezra  and  his  time  break  down ;  but  a 
third,  found  in  2  Maccabees,  has  received  more  atten- 
tion in  recent  times,  and  has  frequently  been  supposed, 
even  by  cautious  scholars,  to  indicate  at  least  the  first 
steps  towards  the  collection  of  the  Prophets  of  the 
Hagiographa  : — 

2  Mac.  ii.  1 3. — The  same  things  were  related  in  the  records, 
and  in  the  memoirs  of  Nehemiah,  and  how,  founding  a  library, 
he  collected  the  narratives  about  the  kings  and  prophets 
[according  to  another  reading,  the  books  of  the  prophets],  and  the 
[writings]  of  David,  and  the  letters  of  kings  concerning  sacred 
offerings.  (14.)  In  like  manner  Judas  collected  the  books 
scattered  in  consequence  of  the  war  that  came  on  us,  and  we 
have  them  by  us  ;  of  which,  if  ye  have  need,  send  men  to  fetch 
them. 

This  passage  stands  in  a  spurious  epistle,  professedly 
addressed  to  the  Jews  in  Alexandria  by  the  Palestinian 
Jews.  The  epistle  is  full  of  fabulous  details,  which 
claim  to  be  taken  from  written  sources.  If  this  claim 
is  not  pure  fiction,  the  sources  must  have  been  apocry- 
phal. The  Memoirs  of  Nehemiah  to  which  our  pas- 
sage appeals  are  one  of  these  worthless  sources,  con- 
taining, as  we  are  expressly  told,  the  same  fables,  and 
therefore  altogether  unworthy  of  credence.  But,  in 
fact,  the  transparent  object  of  the  passage  is  to  palm 
off  upon  the  reader  a  whole  collection  of  forgeries 
8 


158  EZRA  AND  lect.  vi. 

by  making  out  that  the  author  and  his  friends  in 
Palestine  possess,  and  are  willing  to  communicate, 
a  number  of  valuable  and  sacred  books  not  known 
in  Egypt.  Literary  forgery  had  an  incredible  attrac- 
tion for  a  certain  class  of  writers  in  those  ages. 
It  was  practised  by  the  Hellenistic  Jews  as  a  regular 
trade,  and  it  is  in  the  interests  of  this  fraudulent  busi- 
ness that  our  author  introduces  the  story  about  Nehe- 
miah  and  his  library.  Even  if  Nehemiah  did  collect 
a  library,  which  is  likely  enough,  as  he  could  not  but 
desire  to  possess  the  books  of  the  ancient  prophets,  that 
after  all  was  a  very  different  thing  from  forming  an 
authoritative  Canon. 

Scholars  have  sometimes  been  so  busy  trying  to 
gather  a  grain  of  truth  out  of  these  fabulous  traditions, 
that  they  have  forgotten  to  open  their  eyes  and  simply 
look  at  the  Bible  itself  for  a  plain  and  categorical 
account  of  what  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  actually  did  foi 
the  Canon  of  Scripture.  From  Neh.  viii.-x.  we  learn 
that  Ezra  did  establish  a  Canon,  that  is,  that  he  did  lead 
his  people  to  accept  a  written  and  sacred  code  as  the 
absolute  rule  of  faith  and  life  ;  but  this  Canon  of  Ezra 
was  the  Pentateuch.  The  people  entered  into  a  cove- 
nant to  keep  the  Law  of  Mos^s,  which  Ezra  brought 
with  liim  from  Babylon  (Ezra  vii.  14).  That  was  the 
establishment  of  the  Pentateuch  as  the  canonical 
and  authoritative  book  of  the  Jews,  and  that  is  the 
position  which  it  holds  ever  afterwards.  So  we  have 
seen  that  to  the  author  of  Ecclesiasticus  the  Pentateuch, 


LECT.  vr.  THE  CANON.  159 

and  no  larger  Canon,  is  the  book  of  the  Covenant  of 
God  most  high,  and  the  source  of  all  sacred  wisdom; 
while,  to  all  Jewish  theology,  the  Pentateuch  stands 
higher  than  the  other  books  in  sanctity,  and  is  viewed 
as  containing  within  itself  the  whole  compass  of  possible 
revelation.  In  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word  the 
Torah  is  not  merely  the  Canon  of  Ezra,  but  remained 
the  Canon  of  the  Jews  ever  after,  all  other  books  being 
tested  by  their  conformity  with  its  contents. 

That  does  not  mean  that  the  Divine  authority  of 
the  Prophets  was  not  recognised  at  the  time  of  Ezra. 
Undoubtedly  it  was  recognised,  but  it  was  not  felt  to 
be  necessary  to  collect  the  prophetic  books  into  one 
authoritative  volume  with  the  Law.  Indeed,  Ezra  and 
Nehemiah  could  not  have  undertaken  to  make  a  fixed 
and  closed  collection  of  the  Prophets,  unless  they  had 
known  that  no  other  prophets  were  to  rise  after  their 
time ;  and  we  have  no  reason  to  believe  that  they 
had  such  knowledge,  which  could  only  have  come  to 
them  by  special  revelation.  The  other  sacred  books, 
after  the  time  of  Ezra,  continued  to  be  read  and  to 
stand  each  on  its  own  authority,  just  as  the  books  of 
the  apostles  did  in  the  times  of  early  Christianity. 
To  us  this  may  seem  highly  inconvenient.  We  are 
accustomed  to  regard  the  Bible  as  one  book,  and  it 
seems  to  us  a-n  awkward  thing  that  there  should  not 
liave  been  a  fixed  volume  comprising  all  sacred  writ- 
ings. The  Jews,  I  apprehend,  could  not  share  these 
feelings.      The  use  of  a  fixed  Canon  is  either  for  the 


160  CANON  OF  lect.  vr. 

convenience  of  private  reading,  or  for  the  limitation  of 
public  ecclesiastical  lessons,  or  for  the  determination 
of  appeals  in  matter  of  doctrine.  And  in  none  of  these 
points  did  the  Jews  stand  on  the  same  ground  with  us. 
In  these  days  the  Bible  was  not  a  book,  but  a  whole 
library.  The  Law  was  not  written  on  the  same  skins 
as  the  Prophets,  and  each  prophetical  book,  as  we  learn 
from  Luke  iv.  17,  might  form  a  volume  by  itself.  In 
one  passage  of  the  Talmud,  a  volume  containing  aU 
the  Prophets  is  mentioned  as  a  singularity.  Very  few 
persons,  it  may  be  presumed,  could  possess  aU  the 
Biblical  books,  or  even  dream  of  having  them  in  a 
collected  form.^^^ 

Then,  again,  no  part  of  the  canonical  books,  except 
the  Pentateuch,  was  systematically  read  through  in  the 
Synagogue.  The  Pentateuch  was  read  through  every 
three  years.  Lessons  from  the  prophetical  books  were 
added  at  an  early  date,  but  up  to  the  time  of  the 
Mishna  this  was  not  done  on  a  fixed  system,  while  the 
Hagiographa  had  no  place  in  the  Synagogue  service 
until  a  comparatively  late  period,  when  the  book  of 
Esther,  and  still  later  the  other  four  Megilloth,  came  to 
be  used  on  certain  annual  occasions.^^^  And,  finally,  in 
matters  of  doctrine,  the  appeal  to  the  Prophets  or 
Hagiographa  was  not  sharply  distinguished  from 
appeal  to  the  oral  law.  Both  alike  were  parts  of  the 
Kahhala,  the  traditional  and  authoritative  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Pentateuch,  which  stood  as  the  supreme 
standard  above  both. 


LECT.  VI.  THE  PROPHETS,  161 

It  is  true  that  the  whole  doctrine  of  oral  tradition 
arose  gradually  and  after  the  time  of  Ezra.  But  the 
one-sided  legalism  on  which  it  rests  could  never  have 
been  developed  if  the  books  of  the  prophets,  from  the 
time  of  Ezra  downwards,  had  been  officially  recognised 
as  a  part  of  public  revelation,  co-ordinate  and  equally 
fundamental  with  the  law  of  Moses.  The  Prophets,  in 
truth,  with  the  other  remains  of  the  old  sacred  literature, 
were  mainly  regarded  as  books  of  private  edification. 
Wliile  the  Law  was  directly  addressed  to  all  Israel  in 
all  ages,  the  other  sacred  writings  had  a  private  origin, 
or  were  addressed  to  special  necessities.  Up  to  the 
time  of  the  Exile,  the  godly  of  Israel  looked  for  guidance 
to  the  living  prophetic  word  in  their  midst,  and  the 
study  of  written  prophecies  or  liistories,  which,  according 
to  many  indications,  was  largely  practised  in  the  circles 
where  the  living  prophets  had  most  influence,  was 
rather  a  supplement  to  the  spoken  word  than  a  sub- 
stitute for  it.  But  in  the  time  of  the  Exile,  when  the 
national  existence  with  which  the  ancient  religion  of 
Israel  was  so  closely  intertwined  was  hopelessly 
shattered,  when  the  voice  of  the  prophets  was  stilled, 
and  the  public  services  of  the  sanctuary  no  longer  called 
the  devout  together,  the  whole  continuance  of  the 
spiritual  faith  rested  upon  the  remembrance  that  the 
prophets  of  the  Lord  had  foreseen  the  catastrophe,  and 
had  shown  how  to  reconcile  it  with  undiminished  trust 
in  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Israel.  The  written  word 
acquired  a  fresh  significance  for  the  religious  life,  and 


162  CANON  OF  lect.  vi. 

the  books  of  the  prophets,  with  those  records  of  the 
ancient  history  which  were  either  already  framed  in  the 
mould  of  prophetic  thought,  or  were  cast  in  that  mould 
by  editors  of  the  time  of  the  Exile,  became  the  main 
support  of  the  faithful,  who  felt  as  they  had  never  felt 
before,  that  the  words  of  Jehovah  were  pure  words,  silver 
sevenfold  tried,  a  sure  treasure  in  every  time  of  need. 

The  frequent  allusions  to  the  earlier  prophets  in  the 
writings  of  Zechariah  show  how  deep  a  hold  their  words 
had  taken  of  the  hearts  of  the  godly  in  Israel ;  but  the 
very  profundity  of  this  influence,  belonging  as  it  did  to 
the  sphere  of  personal  religion  rather  than  the  public 
order  of  the  theocracy,  made  it  less  necessary  to  stamp 
the  prophetic  series  with  the  seal  of  public  canonicity. 
These  books  had  no  need  to  be  brought  from  Babylon 
with  the  approval  of  a  royal  rescript,  or  laid  before  the 
nation  by  the  authority  of  a  Tirshatha.  The  only  form 
of  public  recognition  which  was  wanting,  and  which 
followed  in  due  course,  was  the  practice  of  reading  from 
the  Prophets  in  the  public  worship  of  the  synagogue. 
It  required  no  more  formal  process  than  the  natural  use 
made  of  this  ancient  literature,  to  bring  it  little  by  little 
into  the  shape  of  a  fixed  collection,  though,  as  we  have 
seen  in  the  example  of  Jeremiah,  there  was  no  standard 
edition  up  to  a  comparatively  late  date.  In  the  time  of 
Daniel  we  already  find  the  prophetic  literature  referred 
to  under  the  name  of  "  the  books  "  or  Scriptures  (Dan. 
ix.  2).  The  English  version  unfortunately  omits  the 
article,  and  loses  the  force  of  the  phrase. 


LECT.  VI.  THE  PROPHETS.  1G3 

The  ultimate  form  of  the  prophetic  collection  is  con- 
tained in  the  Earlier  and  Later  Prophets  of  the  Hebrew 
Bible,  to  which  perhaps  we  must  add  Euth  and  Lament- 
ations, wliich,  on  the  old  scheme  of  twenty-two  books, 
go  with  Judges  and  Jeremiah  respectively,  while  the 
book  of  Joshua,  on  the  other  hand,  appears  to  have  stood 
originally  in  close  connection  with  the  Pentateuch. 
The  authority  of  this  collection,  which  was  inextricably 
interlaced  with  the  profoundest  experiences  of  the 
spiritual  life  of  Israel,  was  practically  never  disputed, 
and  its  influence  on  the  personal  religion  of  the  nation 
was  doubtless  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  preference  assigned 
to  the  Pentateuch  as  the  public  and  official  code  of 
Ezra's  theocracy.  ^^^ 

Equally  undisputed  was  the  position  of  the  Psalter, 
the  hymn-book  of  the  second  Temple.  The  Psalter,  as 
we  shall  see  in  a  future  Lecture,  has  a  complicated 
history,  and,  along  with  elements  of  great  antiquity, 
contains  many  pieces  of  a  date  subsequent  to  the  Exile, 
or  even  to  Ezra.  In  its  finished  form  the  collection  is 
clearly  later  than  the  prophetical  writings.  But  no  part 
of  the  Old  Testament  appeals  more  directly  to  the 
believing  heart,  and  none  bears  a  clearer  impress  of 
inspiration  in  the  individual  poems,  and  of  divine  guid- 
ance in  their  collection.  That  the  book  containing:  the 
subjective  utterance  of  Israel's  faith,  the  answer  of  the 
believing  heart  to  the  word  of  revelation,  continued  to 
grow  after  the  prophetic  voice  was  still,  and  the  wiitten 
law  had  displaced  the  living  word,  was  natural  and 


164  THE  LAW,  THE  PROPHETS,         lect.  vi. 

necessary.  In  the  Psalter  we  see  how  the  ordinances  of 
the  new  theocracy  established  themselves  in  the  hearts 
of  the  people,  as  well  as  in  the  external  order  of  the 
community  at  Jerusalem,  and  the  spiritual  aspects  of  the 
Law  which  escaped  the  legal  subtilty  of  the  Scribes  are 
developed  in  such  Psalms  as  the  119th,  with  an  im- 
mediate force  of  personal  conviction  which  has  supplied 
a  pattern  of  devotion  to  all  following  ages. 

Thus  three  great  masses  of  sacred  literature,  com- 
prising those  elements  which  were  most  immediately 
practical  under  the  old  dispensation,  and  make  up  the 
chief  permanent  value  of  the  Old  Testament  for  the 
Christian  Church,  took  shajDC  and  'attained  to  undis- 
puted authority  on  broad  grounds  of  history,  and  through 
processes  of  experimental  verification,  which  made  it 
unnecessary  to  seek  complicated  theological  arguments 
to  justify  their  place  in  the  Canon.  The  Law,  the 
Prophets,  and  the  Psalms  were  inseparably  linked 
with  the  very  existence  of  the  Old  Testament  Church. 
Their  authority  was  not  derived  from  the  schools  of 
the  Scribes,  and  needed  no  sanction  from  them.  And, 
though  the  spirit  of  legalism  might  mistake  the  true 
connection  and  relative  importance  of  the  Law  and 
the  other  books,  no  Pharisaism  was  able  to  undermine 
the  influence  of  those  evangelical  and  eternal  truths 
which  kept  true  spirituality  alive  in  Israel,  while  the 
official  theology  was  absorbed  in  exclusive  devotion  to 
the  temporary  ordinances  of  the  Law. 

The   Law,  the   Prophets,  and  the  Psalms  are  the 


LECT.  VI.  AND  THE  PSALMS,  1C5 

substance  and  centre  of  the  Old  Testament,  on  wliicli 
the  new  dispensation  builds,  and  to  which  our  Lord 
Himself  appeals  as  the  witness  of  the  Old  Covenant 
to  the  New.  The  rationalising  exegesis  which  in- 
sists, against  every  rule  of  language,  that  the  Psalms 
in  Luke  xxiv.  44  mean  the  Hagiographa  as  a  whole 
misses  the  point  of  our  Lord's  appeal  to  the  preceding 
history  of  revelation,  and  forgets  that  Ecclesiastes, 
Canticles,  and  Esther  are  not  once  referred  to  in  the 
New  Testament,  and  were  still  antilegomena  in  the 
apostolic  age. 

The  Law,  the  Prophets,  and  the  Psalms,  form  an 
intelligible  classification,  in  which  each  element  has  a 
distinctive  character.  And  this  is  still  the  case  if  we 
add  to  the  Psalter  the  other  two  poetical  books  of  Job 
and  Proverbs,  which  stand  beside  the  Psalms  in  our 
Hebrew  Bibles.  But  the  collection  of  the  Hagiographa, 
as  a  whole,  is  not  homogeneous.  "Why  does  not  Daniel 
stand  among  the  later  prophets,  Ezra  and  Chronicles 
among  the  historical  books  ?  Why  is  it  that  the  Hagio- 
grapha were  not  read  in  the  synagogue  ?  With  regard 
to  the  Psalms  tliis  is  intelligible.  They  had  their  place, 
not  in  the  synagogue,  but  in  the  Temple  service.  So, 
too,  the  books  of  Job  and  Proverbs,  which  belong  to 
the  philosophy  of  the  Hebrews,  and  were  specially 
adapted  for  private  study,  might  seem  less  suitable  for 
public  reading  —  Job,  in  particular,  requiring  to  be 
studied  as  a  whole  if  one  is  to  grasp  its  true  sense. 
But  this  explanation  does  not  cover  the  whole  Hagio- 


166  THIRD  SECTION  lect.  vi. 

graplia.  Their  position  can  only  be  explained  by  the 
lateness  of  their  origin,  or  the  lateness  of  their  recog- 
nition as  authoritative  Scriptures.  The  miscellaneous 
collection  of  Hagiographa  appended  to  the  three  great 
poetical  books  is  the  region  of  the  Old  Testament  anti- 
legomena,  and  in  them  we  no  longer  stand  on  the  ground 
of  undisputed  authority  acknowledged  by  our  Lord,  and 
rooted  in  the  very  essence  of  the  Old  Testament  dis- 
pensation. 

The  oldest  explicit  reference  to  a  third  section  of 
sacred  books  is  found  in  the  prologue  to  Ecclesiasticus, 
written  in  Egypt  about  B.C.  130.  The  author  speaks  of 
"  the  many  and  great  things  given  to  us  through  the 
Law  and  the  Prophets,  and  the  others  who  followed 
after  them  ;"  and  again,  of  "  the  Law  and  the  Prophets, 
and  the  other  books  of  the  fathers,"  as  the  study  of  his 
grandfather  and  other  Israelites,  who  aimed  at  a  life 
conformed  to  the  Law. 

When  the  other  books  of  the  fathers  are  said  to 
have  been  written  by  those  who  followed  after  the 
prophets,  the  sense  may  either  be  that  their  authors 
were  later  in  time,  or  that  they  were  subordinate  com- 
panions of  the  prophets.  In  either  case  the  author 
plainly  regards  these  books  as  in  some  sense  secondary 
to  the  prophetic  writings ;  nor  does  it  appear  that  in 
his  time  there  was  a  distmct  and  definite  name  for  this 
collection,  or  perhaps  that  there  was  a  formal  collection 
at  aU.  The  overplus  of  God-given  literature,  after  the 
Law  and  the  Prophets  are  deducted,  is  an  inheritance 


LECT.  VI.  OF  THE  CANON,  1G7 

from  the  fathers.  We  must  not  infer  from  this  state- 
ment that  all  ancient  books  not  comprised  in  the  Law 
and  the  Prophets  were  accepted  without  criticism  as  a 
gift  of  God,  and  formed  a  third  class  of  sacred  literature. 
The  author  of  Chronicles  had  still  access  to  ancient 
books  which  are  now  lost ;  and  the  book  of  Ecclesiastes 
warns  its  readers  against  the  futility  of  much  of  the 
literature  of  the  time,  and  admonishes  them  to  confine 
their  attention  to  the  words  of  the  wise,  the  teacliings 
of  the  masters  of  assemblies,  i.e.  the  sages  met  in  coun- 
cil, "  the  experienced  circle  of  elders  "  praised  in  Ecclesi- 
asticus  xii.  11.  There  were  many  books  in  those  days 
which  claimed  to  be  the  work  of  ancient  worthies,  and 
such  of  them  as  we  still  possess  display  a  very  different 
spirit  and  merit  from  the  acknowledged  Hagiographa. 
There  must  have  been  a  sifting  process  applied  to  this 
huge  mass  of  literature,  and  the  Hagiographa  are  the  re- 
sult. But  it  is  not  so  easy  to  explain  how  this  sifting  took 
place  and  led  to  the  collection  which  we  now  receive. 

One  thing  is  clear.  The  very  separation  of  the 
Hagiographa  from  the  books  of  cognate  character  which 
stand  in  the  second  section  of  the  Hebrew  Canon  proves 
that  the  third  collection  was  formed  after  the  second 
had  been  closed.  And  since  the  prophetic  collection 
was  itseK  a  gradual  formation,  fixed,  not  by  external 
authority,  but  by  silent  consent,  this  brings  the  collec- 
tion of  the  Hagiographa  down  long  after  the  time  of 
Ezra.  With  this  it  agrees  that  some  of  the  books  of  the 
Hagiographa  did  not  originate  till  the  very  end  of  the 


168  THE  CANON 


Persian  period  at  earliest.  The  genealogies  in  Chronicles 
and  ISTehemiah  give  direct  proof  of  this  fact,  and  the  book 
of  Ecclesiastes  can  hardly  be  dated  before  the  Chronicles ; 
while  even  so  conservative  a  critic  as  Delitzsch  now 
admits  that  Daniel  probably  did  not  exist  in  its  present 
form  till  the  time  of  the  Maccabees.  Neither  Esther 
nor  Daniel,  nor  indeed  Ezra,  is  alluded  to  in  the  list  of 
worthies  in  Ecclesiasticus.  Again,  the  book  of  Psalms 
seems  to  have  been  long  confined  to  use  in  the  Temple. 
At  least  the  Septuagint  translation  was  made  from  a 
copy  which  shared  many  graphical  errors  of  our  present 
Hebrew.  Both  therefore  must  go  back  to  one  arche- 
type, which  seems  to  prove  that  copies  were  not  multi- 
plied till  a  pretty  late  date. 

The  determination  of  the  collection  of  the  Hagio- 
grapha  must  therefore  have  taken  place  at  an  epoch 
when  the  tradition  of  the  Scribes  was  in  full  force,  and 
we  cannot  confidently  assert  that  their  false  theories 
had  no  influence  on  the  work.  If  they  had  a  share  in 
determining  the  collection,  we  can  tell  with  tolerable 
certainty  what  principles  they  acted  on.  For  to  them 
all  sacred  writings  outside  the  Torah  were  placed  on  one 
footing  with  the  oral  law.  In  substance  there  was  no 
difference  between  written  books  and  oral  tradition. 
Both  alike  were  divine  and  authoritative  expositions 
of  the  law.  There  was  traditional  Halacha  expanding 
and  applying  legal  precepts,  but  there  was  also  tradi- 
tional Hag^Gjada,  recomised  as  a  rule  of  faith  and  life, 
and  embracing  doctrinal  topics,  practical  exhortation. 


LECT.  VI.  AND  TRADITION.  1G9 

embellishments  and  fabulous  developments  of  Bible  nar- 
ratives/^^ The  difference  between  these  traditions  and 
the  sacred  books  lay  only  in  the  form.  Tradition  was 
viewed  as  essentially  adapted  for  oral  communication. 
Every  attempt  to  reduce  it  to  writing  was  long  dis- 
couraged by  the  Scribes.  It  was  a  common  possession 
of  the  learned,  which  no  man  had  a  right  to  appropriate 
and  fix  by  putting  it  in  a  book  of  his  own.  The 
authority  of  tradition  did  not  lie  with  the  man  who 
uttered  it,  but  in  the  source  from  which  it  had  come 
down ;  and  any  tradition  not  universally  current  and 
acknowledged  as  of  old  authority  had  to  be  authenti- 
cated by  evidence  that  he  who  used  it  had  heard  it 
from  an  older  scholar,  whose  reputation  for  fidelity  was 
a  guarantee  that  he  in  turn  had  received  it  from  a  sure 
source.  The  same  test  would  doubtless  be  applied  to  a 
written  book.  Books  admittedly  new  had  no  authority. 
Nothing  could  be  accepted  unless  it  had  the  stamp  of 
general  currency,  or  was  authenticated  by  the  name  of 
an  ancient  author  dating  from  the  period  antecedent  to 
the  Scribes.  All  this,  as  we  see  from  the  pseudepi- 
graphic  books,  offered  a  great  temptation  to  forgery, 
but  it  offered  also  a  certain  security  that  doubtful  books 
would  not  be  admitted  till  they  had  passed  the  test  of 
such  imperfect  criticism  as  the  Scribes  could  apply. 
And,  besides  all  this,  the  ultimate  criterion  to  which 
every  book  was  subjected  lay  in  the  supreme  standard 
of  the  Law.  Nothing  was  holy  which  did  not  agree 
with  the  teaching  of  the  Pentateuch. 


170  OLD  TESTAMENT  lect.  vi. 

For  some  of  the  Hagiographa  the  test  of  old  cur- 
rency was  plainly  conclusive.  It  does  not  appear  that 
the  book  of  Job  was  ever  challenged,  and  the  only  trace 
of  a  discussion  about  the  Proverbs  is  found  in  a  late 
Jewish  book,  and  in  a  form  which  commands  little 
credence/^^  The  same  thing  holds  good  of  the  Lamenta- 
tions, which,  indeed,  in  the  time  of  Josephus,  seem  to 
have  passed  as  an  appendix  to  Jeremiah.  Ruth,  in  like 
manner,  is  treated  by  Josephus  as  an  appendix  to  Judges. 
The  case  of  the  other  books  is  not  so  clear,  and  for  all 
of  them  we  have  evidence  that  their  position  was  long 
disputed,  and  only  gradually  secured. 

The  book  of  Ezra-Nehemiah  has  a  special  value  for 
the  history  of  the  Old  Covenant,  and  contains  informa- 
tion absolutely  indispensable,  embodying  contemporary 
records  of  the  close  of  the  productive  period  of  Israel's 
history.  Yet  we  find  that  the  Alexandrian  Jews  were 
once  content  to  receive  it  in  the  form  of  a  Midrash, 
with  many  fabulous  additions  and  a  text  arbitrarily 
mangled.  The  Chronicles,  according  to  all  appearance, 
were  once  one  book  with  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  from 
which  they  have  been  so  rudely  torn  that  2  Chron. 
now  ends  in  the  middle  of  a  verse,  which  reappears 
complete  at  the  beginning  of  Ezra.  But  the  Chronicles 
now  stand  after  Ezra-Nehemiah,  as  if  it  were  an  after- 
thought to  admit  them  to  equal  authority.  When  the 
Greek  book  of  Esdras  was  composed  of  extracts  from 
Chronicles,  as  well  as  from  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  the 
three  books  were  probably  still  read  as  one  ^ork.^^^ 


LECT.  VI.  ANTILEGOMENA.  171 

With  regard  to  Daniel,  two  facts  point  to  late 
admission.  Daniel  is  not  mentioned  among  the  worthies 
in  Ecclesiasticus,  and  here  again  the  ancient  Greek  Bible 
has  a  text  encumbered  with  Haggadic  additions. 

The  authority  of  the  book  of  Esther,  which  is  not 
used  by  Philo  or  the  New  Testament,  is  necessarily 
connected  with  the  diffusion  of  the  feast  of  Purim. 
Now,  the  book  contains  two  ordinances  on  this  head — 
the  observance  of  the  feast  proper  (Esther  ix.  22), 
and  the  celebration  of  a  memorial  fast  preceding  it 
(Esther  ix.  31).  According  to  Jewish  usage,  the  fast 
falls  on  the  13th  of  Adar.  But  this  was  the  day  when 
Judas  Maccabaeus  defeated  and  slew  Nicanor  in  the 
battle  of  Bethhoron,  and  was  kept  as  a  joyful  anniversary 
in  Palestine  from  that  time  onward  (1  Mac.  vii.  48). 
The  day  of  Nicanor  is  still  placed  among  the  anniver- 
saries on  which  fasting  is  forbidden  in  the  Megillath 
Ta'anith  after  the  death  of  Trajan.  In  Palestine,  there- 
fore, at  the  time  of  our  Lord,  the  fast  of  Purim  was  not 
observed,  and  it  may  well  be  doubted  whether  even 
the  subsequent  feast  was  universally  acknowledged. 
The  Palestinian  Talmud  still  contains  traditions  of 
opposition  to  its  introduction.  And  here,  again,  it  is  a 
notable  circumstance  that  the  book  is  so  freely  handled 
in  the  two  Greek  recensions  of  the  text,  and  that  even 
the  Aramaic  Targums  use  an  unwonted  licence  of  purely 
romancing  additions. 

The  book  of  Esther  was  not  undisputed  in  the  early 
Christian  Church ;  and,  according  to  Eusebius,  Melito, 


172  ECCLESIASTES  lect.  vi. 

Bishop  of  Sardis  in  the  middle  of  the  second  century, 
journeyed  as  far  as  Palestine  to  ascertain  the  Jewish 
Canon  of  his  time,  and  brought  back  a  list,  from  which 
Esther  was  excluded/^^^ 

The  last  stage  in  the  history  of  the  Jewish  Canon  is 
most  clearly  exhibited  in  the  case  of  Ecclesiastes  and 
the  Song  of  Solomon,  which  were  still  controverted  up 
to  the  very  end  of  the  first  Christian  century.  In 
earlier  times,  as  we  have  seen,  no  urgent  necessity  was 
felt  to  determine  the  precise  compass  of  the  sacred 
books.  But  in  the  apostolic  age  more  than  one  circum- 
stance called  for  a  definite  decision  on  the  subject  of 
the  Canon.  The  school  of  Hillel,  with  its  new  and 
more  powerful  exegetical  methods,  directed  to  find  a 
Scripture  proof  for  every  tradition,  was  naturally  busied 
with  the  compass,  as  well  as  the  text,  of  the  ancient 
Scriptures.  E.  Akiba,  a  rigid  spirit  averse  to  all  com- 
promise, would  admit  no  middle  class  between  sacred 
books  and  books  which  it  was  a  sin  to  read.  "  Those 
who  read  the  outside  books  have  no  part  in  the  life  to 
come."^^^^  Such  books  were  to  be  buried — thrust  away 
in  the  rubbish  room  to  which  condemned  synagogue  rolls 
were  relegated.  But  the  immediately  practical  call  for 
a  precise  definition  of  the  compass  of  the  sacred  books 
arose  from  the  circumstance  that  this  question  came  to 
be  necessarily  associated  with  a  point  of  ritual  obser- 
vance. The  Eabbins,  always  jealous  for  the  ceremonial 
sanctity  of  sacred  things,  were  concerned  to  preserve 
MSS.  of  the  Scriptures  from  being  lightly  handled  or 


LECT.  VI.  AND  CANTICLES.  173 

used  for  common  purposes.  They  therefore  devised,  in 
accordance  with  their  principle  of  hedging  in  the  law, 
a  Halacha  to  the  effect  that  the  sacred  books  communi- 
cate ceremonial  uncleanness  to  hands  that  touch  them, 
or  to  food  with  wliich  they  are  brought  in  contact.  This 
ordinance  was  well  devised  for  the  object  in  view,  for  it 
secured  that  such  books  should  be  kept  in  a  place  by 
themselves,  and  not  lightly  handled.  But  it  now  be- 
came absolutely  necessary  to  know  which  books  defile 
the  hands.  The  Mishna  contains  a  special  treatise  on 
"  hands  "  {ladaim),  and  here  we  find  authentic  informa- 
tion on  the  controversies  to  which  the  ordinance  gave 
rise.  Two  books  were  involved.  The  schools  of 
Shammai  and  Hillel  were  divided  as  to  Ecclesiastes. 
But  there  was  also  discussion  as  to  the  Song  of  Solo- 
mon, and  this  point  came  up  for  special  consideration  at 
a  great  assembly  held  in  lamnia,  about  a.d.  9D,  where 
B.  Akiba  took  a  commanding  place.  Some  of  the 
doctors  maintained  that  the  canonicity  of  Canticles 
was  a  moot  point.  But  Akiba  struck  in  with  his 
wonted  energy,  and  silenced  all  dispute,  "  God  forbid ! " 
he  cried.  "  No  one  in  Israel  has  ever  doubted  that  the 
Song  of  Solomon  defiles  the  hands.  For  no  day  in  the 
history  of  the  world  is  worth  the  day  when  the  Song  of 
Solomon  was  given  to  Israel.  For  all  the  Hagiographa 
are  holy,  but  the  Song  of  Solomon  is  a  holy  of  the 
holies.  If  there  has  been  any  dispute,  it  referred  only 
to  Ecclesiastes."  ^^^^ 

In  the  cliaracteristic  manner  of  theological  partisan- 


174  AKlBA  AND  lect.  vi. 

ship,  Akiba  speaks  with  most  confident  decision  on  the 
points  where  he  knew  his  case  to  be  weakest.  So  far 
was  it  from  being  true  that  no  one  had  ever  doubted  the 
canonicity  of  Canticles  that  he  himself  had  to  hurl  an 
anathema  at  those  who  sung  the  Song  of  Solomon  with 
quavering  voice  in  the  banqueting  house  as  if  it  were  a 
common  lay.  The  same  tendency  to  cover  the  historical 
weakness  of  the  position  of  disputed  books  by  energetic 
protestations  of  their  superlative  worth  appears  in  what 
the  Palestinian  Talmud  relates  of  the  opinions  of  the 
Doctors  as  to  the  roll  of  Esther.  Wliile  some  Eabbins, 
appealing  to  Deuteronomy  v.  22,  maintained  that  a  day 
must  come  when  the  Hagiographa  and  the  Prophets 
would  become  obsolete,  and  only  the  Law  remain; 
nay,  says  Eabbi  Simeon,  Esther  and  the  Halachoth 
can  never  become  obsolete  (Esther  ix.  28).^^^^ 

In  speaking  of  these  Old  Testament  Antilegomena  I 
have  confined  myself  to  a  simple  statement  of  facts  that 
are  not  open  to  dispute.  It  is  matter  of  fact  that  the 
position  of  several  books  was  still  subject  of  controversy 
in  the  apostolic  age,  and  was  not  finally  determined 
tiU  after  the  fall  of  the  Temple  and  the  Jewish  state. 
Before  that  date  the  Hagiographa  did  not  form  a  closed 
collection  with  an  undisputed  list  of  contents,  and  there- 
fore the  general  testimony  of  Christ  and  the  Apostles 
to  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  cannot  be  used  as 
certainly  including  books  like  Esther,  Canticles,  and 
Ecclesiastes,  which  were  still  disputed  among  the  or- 
thodox Jews  in  the  apostolic  age,  and  to  which  the 


LECT.  VI.  THE  CANON.  175 

New  Testament  never  makes  reference.     These  books    i 
have  been  delivered  to  us;  they  have  their  use  and   I 
value,  which  are  to   be   ascertained   by  a  frank  and 
reverent  study  of  the  texts  themselves  ;  but  those  who 
insist  on  placing  them  on  the  same  footing  of  undisputed 
authority  with  the  Law,  the  Prophets,  and  the  Psalms,   ; 
to  which  our  Lord  bears  direct  testimony,  and  so  make  | 
the  whole  doctrine  of  the  Canon  depend  on  its  weakest  / 
part,  sacrifice  the  true  strength  of  the  evidence  on  which 
the  Old  Testament  is  received  by  Christians,  and  com- 
mit the  same  fault  with  Akiba  and  his  fellow  Eabbins, 
who  bore  down  the  voice  of  free  inquiry  with  anathemas 
instead  of  arirument. 


176  THE  PSALTER:  lect.  vii. 


LECTUEE  VII. 


THE   PSALTEr/^^ 


Up  to  tliis  point  we  have .  been  occupied  with  general 
discussions  as  to  the  transmission  of  the  Old  Testament 
among  the  Jews,  and  the  collection  of  its  books  into  a 
sacred  canon.  In  the  remaining  part  of  our  course  we 
must  deal  with  the  origin  of  individual  books ;  and  as  it 
is  impossible  in  six  lectures  to  go  over  the  whole  field 
of  the  Old  Testament  literature,  I  shall  confine  myself 
to  the  discussion  of  some  cardinal  problems  referring 
to  the  three  great  central  masses  of  the  Old  Testament, 
the  Law,  the  Prophets,  and  the  Psalms.  The  present 
Lecture  will  deal  with  the  Book  of  Psalms. 

The  Psalter,  as  we  have  it,  unquestionably  contains 
Psalms  of  the  Exile  and  the  new  Jerusalem.  It  is  also 
generally  admitted  to  contain  Psalms  of  the  period  of 
David,  thus  embracing  within  its  compass  poems  extend- 
ing over  a  range  of  some  five  hundred  years.  How  did 
such  a  collection  come  together  ?  How  was  it  formed, 
and  how  were  the  earlier  Psalms  preserved  up  to  the 
date  when  they  were  embodied  in  our  present  Psalter  ? 

In  discussing  this  question,  let  us  begin  by  looking 
at  the  nature  and  objects  of  the  Psalter.     The  Book  of 


LECT.  VII.  ITS  PURPOSE.  177 

Psalms  is  a  collection  of  religious  and  devotional  poetry. 
It  is  made  vip  mainly  of  prayers  and  songs  of  praise. 
But  it  is  not  a  collection  of  all  the  religious  poetry  of 
Israel.  That  is  manifest  from  the  circumstance  that,  of 
the  poems  preserved  in  the  historical  books,  only  one  is 
repeated  in  the  Psalter.  That  one  is  the  18th  Psalm, 
corresponding  to  2  Samuel  xxii.,  and  even  this  excep- 
tion is  perhaps  more  apparent  than  real.  We  are 
already  familiar  with  the  fact  that  the  historical  books 
contain  elements  introduced  at  different  times  from 
different  sources.  JSTow  2  Sam.  xxiv.  1  reads  as  if  it 
had  once  followed  on  chap.  xxi.  14,  so  that  the  Psalm 
belongs  to  a  section  of  later  insertion.  With  this  it 
agrees  that  this  Psalm  and  the  last  words  of  David  are 
not  placed  in  connection  with  the  events  of  David's  life 
to  which  they  refer,  and  so  it  is  very  possible  that  these 
pieces  were  not  found  in  the  Book  of  Samuel  when  the 
first  section  of  the  Psalter  was  collected.  But,  be  this 
as  it  may,  the  other  specimens  of  religious  poetry  of 
the  Hebrews  preserved  in  the  historical  books  are  not 
repeated  in  the  Psalter,  so  that  the  Book  of  Psalms 
cannot  have  been  meant  to  include  everything  of  sacred 
poetry  that  was  known  to  exist.  Again,  the  collection 
is  not  formed  with  an  historical  object.  It  is  true  that 
there  are  some  titles  which  contain  historical  notes,  but 
on  the  other  hand  there  are  many  Psalms  whose  con- 
tents naturally  suggest  an  inquiry  as  to  the  historical 
situation  in  which  they  were  composed,  but  where  we 
have  no  title  or  hint  of  any  sort  to  answer  that  ques- 


178  LITURGICAL  PURPOSE  lect.  vii. 

tion.  Again,  although  the  Psalms  represent  a  great 
range  of  individual  religious  experience,  it  is  to  be 
noticed  that  they  avoid  such  situations  and  expressions 
as  are  of  too  unique  a  character  to  be  used  in  the 
devotion  of  other  believers.  The  feelings  expressed  in 
the  Psalms  are  mainly  such  as  can  be  shared  by  every 
devout  soul,  if  not  in  every  circumstance,  yet  at  least 
in  circumstances  which  frequently  recur  in  human  life. 
Some  of  the  Psalms  are  manifestly  written  from  the  first 
with  a  general  devotional  purpose,  as  prayers  or  praises 
which  can  be  used  in  any  mouth.  In  others  again  the 
poet  seems  to  speak,  not  in  his  private  person,  but  in  the 
name  of  the  people  of  God  as  a  whole ;  and  even  the 
Psalms  more  directly  individual  in  occasion  have  so 
much  catholicity  of  sentiment  that  they  have  served 
with  the  other  hymns  of  the  Psalter  as  a  manual  of 
devotion  for  the  Church  of  all  ages  in  both  dispen- 
sations. 

The  Psalms,  then,  are  a  collection  of  religious  poetry, 
chosen  with  a  special  view  to  the  edification  of  the  Old 
Testament  Church.  But  further,  the  purpose  immedi- 
ately contemplated  in  the  collection  is  not  the  private 
edification  of  the  individual  Israelite,  but  the  public 
worship  of  the  Old  Testament  Church  in  the  Temple, — 
that  is,  necessarily  (since  some  of  the  Psalms  are  later 
than  the  Exile),  in  the  second  Temple.  Tliis  appears 
most  clearly  in  the  latter  part  of  the  book,  where  we 
meet  with  many  Psalms  obviously  composed  from  the 
first  for  liturgical  use.     Some  are  doxologies ;  others  are 


LECT.  VII.  OF  THE  PSALTER.  179 

largely  made  up  of  extracts  from  earlier  Psalms,  in  a 
way  very  natural  in  a  liturgical  manual  of  devotion, 
but  not  so  natural  in  a  poet  merely  composing  a  hymn 
for  liis  personal  use.  The  liturgical  element  is  specially 
prominent  in  the  Hallelujah  Psalms,  for  these  are 
hymns  used  in  the  part  of  the  Temple  service  called 
the  hallel,  which,  as  we  learn  from  the  Chronicles 
(2  Chron.  v.  12,  13),  was  associated  with  the  trumpet- 
blowing  of  the  priests.  Again,  throughout  the  Psalms, 
the  Temple,  Zion,  the  Holy  City,  are  kept  in  the  fore- 
ground. Once  more,  the  same  destination  appears  in 
the  titles.  The  musical  titles  are  full  of  technical  terms 
which  occur  again  in  the  Book  of  Chronicles  in  descrip- 
tions of  the  Levitical  Psalmody  of  the  Temple.  The 
proper  names  in  the  titles  have  a  similar  reference. 
The  sons  of  Korah  were  a  guild  of  Temple  musicians ; 
Asaph  was  the  father  and  patron  of  a  similar  guild ; 
Heman  and  Ethan  are  named  in  the  Chronicles  as  Temple 
singers  of  the  time  of  David.  Finally,  the  very  name 
of  the  Psalter  in  the  Hebrew  Bible  leads  to  the  same 
conclusion.  The  Psalms  are  called  Tehillim,  hymns, 
from  the  same  root  as  Hallelujah,  and  with  the  same 
allusion  to  the  Temple  service  of  praise.  ^^^ 

The  fact  that  the  Psalter  is  a  hymnal  at  once 
elucidates  some  important  features  in  the  book  and 
suggests  certain  rules  for  its  profitable  use  and  study. 
The  liturgical  character  of  the  Psalms  explains  their 
universality,  and  justifies  the  large  use  made  of  them 
in  the  Christian  Church.     As   a  liturgical  collection. 


180  PERMANENT  USE  lect.  vii. 

tlie  Psalter  expresses  the  feelings  and  hopes,  the  faith, 
the  prayers  and  the  praises  of  the  Old  Testament 
Church,  their  sense  of  sin,  and  their  joyful  apprehension 
of  God's  salvation.  These  are  the  subjective  elements 
of  religion,  the  answer  of  the  believing  heart  to  God. 
And  precisely  in  these  elements  the  religion  of  aU  ages 
is  much  alike.  The  New  Testament  revelation  made 
a  great  change  in  the  objective  elements  of  religion. 
Old  ideas  and  forms  passed  away,  and  new  things  took 
their  place ;  but  through  all  this  growth  of  the  objective 
side  of  revelation,  the  devotion  of  the  faithful  heart  to 
God  remains  essentially  one  and  the  same.  Our  faith, 
our  sense  of  sin,  our  trust  upon  God  and  His  salvation, 
the  language  of  our  prayers  and  praises,  are  still  one 
with  those  of  the  Old  Testament  Church.  It  is  true 
that  not  a  little  of  the  colouring  of  the  Psalms  is 
derived  from  the  ritual  and  order  of  the  old  dispensa- 
tion, and  has  now  become  antiquated ;  but  practical 
religion  does  not  refuse  those  bonds  of  connection  with 
the  past.  The  believing  soul  is  never  anxious  to 
separate  its  own  spiritual  life  from  the  spiritual  life  of 
the  fathers.  Eatlier  does  it  cling  with  special  affection 
to  the  links  that  unite  it  to  the  Church  of  the  Old 
Testament ;  and  the  forms  which,  in  their  literal  sense, 
are  now  antiquated,  become  to  us  an  additional  group 
of  figures  in  the  rich  poetic  imagery  of  the  Hebrew 
hynmal. 

But  the  Psalter  and  the  Old  Testament  in  general 
are  to  us  not  merely  books  of  devotion  but  sources  of 


LECT.  VII.  OF  THE  PSALTER.  181 

study  for  the  better  knowledge  of  the  whole  course  of 
God's  revelation.  It  is  a  law  of  all  science  that,  to  know 
a  thing  thoroughly,  we  must  know  it  in  its  genesis  and 
in  its  growth.  To  understand  the  ways  of  God  with 
man,  and  the  whole  meaning  of  His  plan  of  salvation, 
it  is  necessary  to  go  back  and  see  His  work  in  its 
beginnings,  examining  the  rudimentary  stages  of  the 
process  of  revelation;  and  for  this  the  Psalms  are 
invaluable,  for  they  give  us  the  first  answer  of  the 
believing  heart  to  God  under  a  dispensation  where  the 
objective  elements  of  revelation  were  far  less  fully 
developed,  and  where  spiritual  processes  were  in  many 
respects  more  naive  and  childlike.  While  the  simple 
Christian  can  always  take  up  the  Psalm-book  and  use 
it  for  devotion,  appropriating  those  elements  which 
remain  the  same  in  all  ages,  those  who  are  called  upon 
to  study  the  Bible  systematically,  and  who  desire  to 
learn  all  that  can  be  learned  from  it,  will  also  look  at 
the  Psalms  from  another  point  of  view.  Piecognising 
the  fact  that  many  of  them  have  an  historical  occasion, 
and  that  they  express  the  life  of  a  particular  stage  of 
the  Old  Testament  Church,  they  will  endeavour  to 
study  tlie  history  of  the  collection,  and  ascertain  what 
can  be  learned  of  the  epoch  and  situation  in  which  each 
Psalm  was  written. 

In  entering  upon  this  study,  it  is  highly  important 
to  carry  with  us  the  fact  that  the  Psalms  are  preserved 
to  us,  not  in  an  historical  collection,  but  in  a  hymn- 
book  specially  adapted  for  the  use  of  the  second  Temple. 


182  TEXT  OF  lect.  vii. 

The  plan  of  a  hymn-book  does  not  secure  that  every 
poem  shall  be  given  exactly  as  it  was  written  by  the 
first  author.  The  practical  object  of  the  collection 
makes  it  legitimate  and  perhaps  necessary  that  there 
should  be  such  adaptations  and  alterations  as  may 
secure  a  larger  scope  of  practical  utility  in  ordinary 
services. 

In  a  book  which  contains  Psalms  spreading  over  a 
period  of  500  years,  such  a  period  as  that  which  extends 
between  Chaucer  and  Tennyson,  or  between  Dante  and 
Manzoni,  changes  of  this  kind  could  hardly  be  avoided ; 
and  so  in  fact  we  do  find  not  a  few  variations  in  the 
text  and  indications  of  the  hand  of  an  editor  retouch- 
ing the  original  poems.  Between  Psalm  xviii.  and  2 
Samuel  xxii.  there  are  some  seventy  variations  not 
merely  orthographical.  The  Psalter  itself  repeats 
certain  poems  with  changes.  Psalm  liii.  is  a  copy  of 
Ps.  xiv.  with  variations  of  text ;  Psalm  Ixx.  repeats 
Ps.  xL  13-17;  Ps.  cviii.  is  verses  7-11  of  Ps.  Ivii., 
followed  by  Ps.  Ix.  5-12.  Another  clear  sign  that 
we  have  not  every  Psalm  in  its  original  text  lies  in 
the  alphabetical  acrostics,  Psalms  ix.-x.  xxv.  xxxiv. 
xxxvii.  cxi.  cxii.  cxix.  cxlv.,  in  which  the  initial  letters 
of  successive  half  verses,  verses,  or  larger  stanzas  make 
up  the  alphabet.  It  is  of  the  nature  of  an  acrostic  to  be 
perfect.  An  acrostic  poem  which  misses  some  letter  or 
puts  it  in  a  false  place  is  a  failure;  and  therefore  when 
we  fijid  that  some  of  these  acrostics  are  now  imperfect, 
we  must  conclude  that  the  text  has  suffered.     In  some 


LECT.  VII.  THE  PSALMS.  183 

cases  it  is  still  easy  to  suggest  the  slight  change  neces- 
sary to  restore  the  original  scheme.  Elsewhere,  as  in 
the  beautiful  acrostic  now  reckoned  as  two  Psalms 
(ix.  and  x.),  the  corruption  in  the  text,  or  possibly  the 
intentional  change  made  to  adapt  the  poem  for  public 
worship,  is  so  considerable  that  the  original  text  cannot 
be  recovered.  ^^^ 

In  general,  then,  we  conclude  that  the  oldest  text  of 
a  sacred  lyric  is  not  always  preserved  in  the  Psalter. 
And  so,  again,  we  must  not  suppose  that  the  notes  of 
authors'  names  in  a  hymn-book  have  the  same  weight 
as  the  statements  of  an  historical  book.  In  a  liturgical 
collection  the  author's  name  is  of  little  consequence, 
and  the  editors  who  altered  the  text  of  a  poem  cannot 
be  assumed  a  'priori  to  have  taken  absolute  care  to  pre- 
serve a  correct  record  of  its  origin.  But  to  this  subject 
we  shall  recur  presently 

Let  us  now  look  at  the  collection  somewhat  more 
closely ;  and,  in  the  first  place,  note  that  in  the  Hebrew 
text  the  Book  of  Psalms  is  divided  into  five  books,  each 
of  which  has  a  separate  heading  not  translated  in  our 
English  Bible/'*^  But  another  sign  of  the  fivefold  divi- 
sion of  the  Psalms  can  be  followed  in  the  English,  for 
each  of  the  books  ends  with  a  doxology.  The  scheme 
of  the  whole  is  as  follows : — 


Book  I.  Psalms  1-41. — Psalms  ascribed  to  David,  except  1, 
2,  10  [which  is  part  of  9],  33.  Doxology. — Blessed  be 
Jehovah,  God  of  Israel,  from  everlasting  and  to  everlasting. 
Amen  and  Amen. 


184  THE  FIVE  BOOKS  lect.  vii. 

Book  II.  Psalms  42-72. — 42-49,  Korahite  [43  being  part  of  42]  ; 
50,  Asaph  ;  51-71,  David,  or  anonymous  ;  72,  Solomon. 
Doxology. — Blessed  be  Jehovah  God,  the  God  of  Israel,  who 
alone  doeth  wondrous  things.  And  blessed  be  His  name 
of  glory  for  ever  :  and  let  the  whole  earth  be  filled  with 
His  glory  ;  Amen  and  Amen. 

Suhscri'ptwn. — The  prayers  of  David  the  son  of  Jesse  are  ended. 

Book  HI.  Psalms  73-89.-73-83,  Asaph  ;  84,  85,  87,  88, 
Korahite  ;  86,  David  ;  88,  Heman  ;  89,  Ethan.  Doxology. 
— Blessed  be  Jehovah  for  ever.     Amen  and  Amen. 

Book  IV.  Psalms  90-106.— 90,  Moses;  101,  103,  David. 
Doxology. — Blessed  be  Jehovah,  God  of  Israel,  from  ever- 
lasting and  to  everlasting.  And  let  all  the  people  say,  Amen  : 
Hallelujah. 

Book  V.  Psalms  107-150.— 108-110,  122,*  124,*  131,*  133,* 
138-145,  David;  127,*  Solomon;  120-134,  Pilgrimage 
songs.     Ends  with  a  doxological  Psalm. 

The  cloxologies,  with  the  exception  of  that  in  Book 
IV.,  plainly  form  no  part  of  the  Psahns  to  which  they 
are  attached,  but  mark  the  end  of  each  book  after  the 
pious  fashion,  not  uncommon  in  Eastern  literature,  to 
clos^  the  composition  or  transcription  of  a  volume  with 
a  brief  prayer  or  words  of  praise.  In  Psalm  cvi.  the 
case  is  different.  The  doxology  includes  a  liturgical 
direction  that  all  the  people  shall  say,  "  Amen,  Halle- 
lujah," which  seems  to  imply  that  this  doxology  was 
actually  sung  at  the  close  of  the  Psalm.  But  the  other 
doxologies  mark  actual  subdivisions  in  the  Psalm-book, 
and  it  naturally  occurs  to  us  to  inquire  whether  these 
subdivisions  are  not  the  boundaries  of  earlier  collec- 
tions, of  which  the  first  three  books  of  our  present 
Psalter  are  made  up. 

*  Not  so  in  LXX 


LECT.  VII.  OF  PSALMS.  185 

A  closer  examination  confirms  this  conjecture. 
The  first  book,  Psalms  i.-xli.,  is  all  Davidic,  every 
Psalm  bearing  the  title  of  David  except  Psalms  i.  ii. 
X.  xxxiii.  Now  Psalm  i.  is  clearly  a  preface  to  the 
collection.  But  in  Talmudic  times  Psalm  ii.  was 
reckoned  as  forming  one  section  with  Psalm  i.,  and 
so  it  is  actually  cited  as  the  first  Psalm  in  the  correct 
text  of  Acts  xiii.  33.  •  Again,  Psalm  x.  is  the  second 
part  of  the  acrostic  Psalm  ix.,  and  Psalm  xxxiii.  is 
certainly  a  late  piece,  and  probably  came  into  this  part 
of  the  Psalter  afterwards.  The  first  book,  therefore,  is 
a  formal  collection  of  Psalms  ascribed  to  David.  So, 
again,  in  the  second  book,  the  Psalms  ascribed  to  David 
form  a  connected  group  apart  from  the  Korahitic  and 
Asaphic  Psalms,  though  including  some  anonymous 
pieces,  and  Psalm  Ixxii.,  which  is  entitled  "  of  Solomon," 
but  was  perhaps  viewed,  as  our  version  takes  it,  as  a 
prayer  of  David  for  his  son.  In  Book  III.  only  Psalm 
Lxxxvi.  bears  the  name  of  David,  and  this  title  is  un- 
questionably a  mistake,  for  the  Psalm  is  a  mere  cento 
of  reminiscences  from  older  parts  of  Scripture,  and  the 
prayer  in  verse  11,  "  Unite  my  heart  to  fear  thy  name,"  is 
based  on  the  promise  (Jer.  xxxii.  39),  "  I  will  give  them 
one  heart  ...  to  fear  me  continually."  It  is  the 
law  of  the  religious  life  that  prayer  is  based  on  promise, 
and  not  conversely. ^^^  It  cannot  be  accident  that  has 
thus  disposed  the  Davidic  Psalms  of  Books  I.-III.  in 
two  groups.  But  if  the  final  collector  had  gathered 
these  poems  together  for  the  first  time,  he  would  surely 


186  THE  ELOHISTIC  lect.  vii. 

have  made  one  group,  not  two.  Nor  can  lie  have 
added  the  subscription  to  Psalm  Ixxii.,  "  The  prayers  of 
David  are  ended,"  unless,  indeed,  we  suppose  that  the 
titles  ascribing  Psalms  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  books 
to  David  are  all  additions  of  later  copyists  after  the 
collection  was  closed.  We  conclude,  then,  that  the 
first  book  once  existed  as  a  separate  collection,  and 
that  the  subscription  to  Psalm  l^xii.,  with  the  doxology, 
marks  the  close  of  another  once  separate  collection  of 
Davidic  Psalms. 

Another  evidence  that  the  first  three  books  of  the 
Psalter  contain  collections  formed  by  more  than  one 
editor  lies  in  the  names  of  God.  Books  I.  IV.  and  V. 
of  the  Psalter  use  the  names  of  God  in  the  same  way  as 
most  other  parts  of  the  Old  Testament,  where  Jehovah 
is  the  prevailing  term,  and  other  names,  such  as  Elohim 
(God),  occur  less  frequently.  But  in  the  greater  part 
of  Books  II.  and  III.  (Psalms  xlii.-lxxxiii.)  the  name 
of  Jehovah  is  rare,  and  Elohim  takes  its  place  even 
where  the  substitution  reads  very  awkwardly.  For 
example,  a  common  Old  Testament  phrase  is  "  Jeho- 
vah my  God,"  "  Jehovah  thy  God,"  based  upon  Exodus 
XX.  2,  where,  in  the  preface  to  the  ten  commandments, 
we  have,  "  I  am  Jehovah  thy  God."  Some  later  writers 
seem  to  have  avoided  the  name  Jehovah,  in  accord- 
ance with  a  tendency  which  ultimately  became  so  pre- 
valent among  the  Jews  that  they  now  never  pronounce 
the  word  Jehovah  (Jahwe),  but  read  Adonai  (Lord)  in 
its  place.     Such  writers  avoid  the  phrase   "  Jehovah 


LECT.  VII.  PSALM  BOOK.  187 

my  God,"  and  sftiiply  say,  "my  God."  But  in  tlie 
Elohim  Psalms,  and  nowhere  else  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, we  find  the  peculiar  phrase  "  God  my  God," 
with  Elohim  in  place  of  Jehovah.  And  so,  even  in 
Psalm  1.  7,  where  the  words  of  Exodus  xx.  2  are  actually 
quoted,  we  read  "I  am  God  thy  God."  Clearly  this  is 
no  accident.  The  Psalms  in  which  the  name  Elohim, 
and  not  Jehovah,  is  habitually  used  hang  together. 
And,  when  we  look  more  closely  at  the  matter,  we  see 
that  they  not  only  hang  together,  but  that  the  pheno- 
menon of  the  names  of  God  is  due,  not  to  the  original 
authors  of  the  Psalms,  but  to  the  collector  himself;  for 
some  of  these  Elohim  Psalms  occur  also  in  the  earlier 
Jehovistic  part  of  the  Psalter.  Psalm  liii.  is  identical 
with  Psalm  xiv. ;  Psalm  Ixx.  with  part  of  Psalm  xl. ; 
and  here,  among  other  variations  of  text,  we  find 
Jehovah  six  times  changed  to  Elohim,  and  only  one 
converse  change.  That  is  a  clear  proof  that  the  Elohim 
Psalms  have  been  formed  by  an  editor  who,  for  some 
reason,  preferred  to  suppress, .  as  far  as  possible,  the 
name  Jehovah. 

Now  let  us  look  a  little  more  closely  at  this  Elohistic 
collection.  It  fonns  the  main  part  of  the  second  and 
third  Psalm  Books.  The  Psalms  that  remain  look  like 
an  appendix,  containing  some  supplementary  Korahite 
Psalms,  and  one  Psalm  ascribed  to  David,  which  we 
have  seen  to  be  late,  and  which  may  fairly  be  judged  to 
be  no  part  of  the  original  Davidic  collections.  If  we 
set  the  appendix  on  one  side  we  find  in  Books  II.  and 


188  LEVITICAL  PSALMS.  lect.  vii. 

III.  a  single  Elohistic  collection  with  a  well-marked 
editorial  peculiarity  running  through  it.  This  Elohistic 
Psalm  Book  consists  of  two  kinds  of  elements.  It  con- 
tains, in  the  first  place,  Levitical  Psalms, — that  is.  Psalms 
ascribed  to  Levitical  choirs,  the  sons  of  Korah  and  Asaph, 
and,  further,  a  collection  of  Davidic  Psalms  marked  off 
as  a  distinct  section  by  the  subscription  at  the  end  of 
Psalm  Ixxii.  and  the  accompanying  doxology.  As  now 
arranged,  the  Davidic  collection  is  wedged  in  between 
two  masses  of  Levitical  Psalms,  and  even  separates  the 
Asaphic  Psalin  1.  from  the  body  of  the  Asaphic  collection, 
Psalms  Ixxiii.-lxxxiii.  It  is  not  probable  that  this  was 
the  original  order,  for  if  we  simply  take  Psalms  xli.-L, 
and  lift  them  into  the  place  between  Psalms  Ixxii.  and 
Ixxiii.,  we  get  a  complete  and  natural  arrangement.  We 
thus  have  a  book  containing,  first,  a  collection  of  Davidic 
Psalms  with  a  subscription,  and  then  two  collections 
of  Levitical  Psalms,  the  first  Koraliitic  and  the  last 
Asaphic.  We  may  fairly  accept  this  as  the  original 
order,  which  possibly  was  changed  by  the  final  collector 
in  order  that  he  might  show  by  a  distinct  mark  that  the 
two  Davidic  collections  in  his  work  were  originally 
separate.  Perhaps,  also,  he  may  have  been  influenced 
by  the  fact  that  Psalms  1.  and  li.  are  both  suitable  for 
the  service  of  sacrifices  of  praise.  Such  is  the  account 
it  seems  reasonable  to  give  of  Books  II.  and  III. 

We  come  next  to  Books  lY.  and  V.  They  also  are 
really  one  book,  for  the  doxology  of  Psalm  cvi.  belongs 
to  the  Psalm,  and  there  is  no  clear  mark  of  difference  in 


LECT.  VII.  AGE  OF  THE  PSALMS.  189 

subject,  character,  or  editorial  treatment  in  the  Psahns 
which  precede  and  follow  it.  But,  taken  as  a  unity, 
Books  IV.  and  V.  are  marked  by  a  liturgical  character 
more  predominant  than  in  the  other  books.  They  are 
also  of  later  collection  than  the  Elohistic  Psalm-book, 
for  Psalm  cviii.  is  made  up  of  two  Elohim  Psalms, 
retaining  the  predominant  use  of  Elohim,  although  the 
other  Psalms  of  the  last  two  books  are  Jehovistic.  As 
the  Elohim  Psalms  got  their  peculiar  use  of  the  names 
of  God  from  the  collector,  and  not  from  their  authors, 
we  may  safely  affirm  that  Books  II.  and  III.  existed  in 
their  collected  form  before  Psalm  cviii.  was  composed. 

Thus  the  five  books  of  the  Psalms  reduce  themselves 
for  us  to  three  books,  the  second  one  having  a  sub- 
division. The  first  book,  which  from  every  point  of 
view  proclaims  itself  the  oldest,  consists  of  Davidic 
Psalms;  the  second  book,  now  our  second  and  third, 
consists  (except  in  the  appendix)  of  Elohistic  Psalms, 
and  these  again  are  subdivided  into  a  collection  of 
Davidic  Psalms  and  a  twofold  series  of  Levitical 
Hymns ;  and  finally,  the  fourth  and  fifth  books  contain 
the  latest  Psalms,  mainly  written  from  the  first  with  a 
liturgical  purpose,  and  not  merely  adapted  for  liturgical 
use  like  many  of  the  poems  in  the  earlier  part  of  the 
collection. 

We  come  next  to  inquire  into  the  age  of  these  three 
collections.  Most  of  the  Psalms  in  Books  IV.  and  V. 
are  certainly  late,  not  only  in  collection,  but  in  author- 
ship.    Observe,  in  the  first  place,  the  discontinuance 


190  MUSICAL  TITLES.  lect.  vii. 

of  the  musical  titles.  Such  titles  as  "To  the  chief 
musician  (?)  upon  Neginoth,"  "  upon  Sheminith,"  and 
so  forth,  are  frequent  in  the  first  three  Psalm  Books,  but 
are  not  found  in  the  last  two.  Now  these  titles  were  the 
technical  terms  of  the  Temple  music,  still  recognised  as 
such  by  the  Chronicler,  but  which  had  become  unknown 
and  unintelligible  in  the  time  of  the  Septuagint.  It 
seems  as  if  they  had  already  gone  out  of  use  when 
Books  IV.  and  V.  were  collected,  and  this  again  would 
imply  that  by  that  time  the  national  music  of  Israel 
had  undergone  a  revolution,  which  can  hardly  have  been 
due  to  anything  else  than  the  influence  of  foreign  art. 
One  naturally  thinks  of  the  great  change  on  the  whole 
civilisation  and  art  of  the  East  which  was  caused  by  the 
introduction  of  Greek  influence.  Can  we  suppose  that 
the  Psalter  was  completed  so  late  ?  Many  scholars 
answer  in  the  negative,  but  there  are  good  names  and 
strong  reasons  on  the  other  side,  and  at  any  rate  the 
matter  is  not  so  certain  as  to  forbid  us  to  suggest  such 
an  explanation.  ^^^  A  curious  and  interesting  feature  in 
the  musical  titles  in  the  earlier  half  of  the  Psalter  is 
that  many  of  them  indicate  the  tune  to  which  the 
Psalm  was  set,  by  quoting  phrases  like  Aijeleth  hash- 
shahar,  or  Jonath  elem  rechokim,  which  are  evidently 
the  names  of  familiar  songs.  Of  the  song  which  gave 
the  title  Al-taschith,  "Destroy  not,"  a  trace  is  still 
preserved  in  Isa.  Ixv.  8.  "When  the  new  wine  is 
found  in  the  cluster,"  says  the  prophet,  men  say,  "  De- 
stroy it  not,  for  a  blessing  is  in  it."     These  words  in  the 


LECT.  VII.  PILGRIMAGE  SONGS.  191 

Hebrew  have  a  distinct  lyric  rhythm.  They  are  the 
first  line  of  one  of  the  vintage  songs  so  often  alluded  to 
in  Scripture.  And  so  we  learn  that  the  early  religious 
melody  of  Israel  had  a  popular  origin,  and  was  closely 
connected  with  the  old  joyous  life  of  the  nation.  In 
the  time  w^hen  the  last  books  of  the  Psalter  were  com- 
posed, the  Temple  music  had  passed  into  another  phase, 
and  had  differentiated  itself  from  the  melodies  of  the 
people,  just  as  we  should  no  longer  think  of  using 
as  church  music  the  popular  airs  to  which  Psalms 
and  hymns  w^ere  set  in  Scotland  at  the  time  of  the 
Keformation. 

In  the  fifth  Psalm  Book  a  special  group  consists  of 
the  Songs  of  Degrees,  or  more  literally,  "  Songs  of 
Ascent."^' ^  To  ascend  is  the  Hebrew  technical  term  for 
going  up  to  Jerusalem  on  pilgrimage.  The  songs  of 
ascent,  therefore,  can  hardly  be  anything  else  than  a 
collection  of  hymns  to  be  sung  by  pilgrims  to  the 
sanctuary ;  and  with  this  interpretation  the  contents  of 
the  collection  harmonise,  some  of  the  Psalms  either 
directly  alluding  to  the  pilgiimage  (cxxii.),  or  express- 
ing such  sentiments  as  would  rise  to  the  lips  of 'the 
pilgrims  when  the  mountains  of  Zion  and  the  Temple 
first  presented  themselves  to  their  gaze  (cxxi.  cxxviii.). 
The  custom  of  going  up  to  the  feasts  at  Jerusalem  with 
music  and  song  is  ancient  (Isa.  xxx.  29),  but  the  pil- 
grimage Psalms  of  our  Psalter  are  plainly,  in  part,  later 
than  the  Exile,  for  they  speak  of  captivity  and  deliver- 
ance.   They  are,  therefore,  Psalms  of  the  second  Temple. 


192  DAVIDIC  PSALMS  lect.  vii. 

Nay,  rsalin  cxxii.  is  later  than  the  work  of  Ezra  and 
Nehemiah,  for  it  speaks  of  "  Jerusalem  the  rebuilt,  like 
a  city  well  knit  together."  This  language  could  not  be 
used  before  the  time  of  Nehemiah,  when  the  walls  were 
fallen  and  great  part  of  the  area  of  the  city  waste 
(Neh.  ii.  17,  vii.  4).  From  the  English  version  it  seems 
as  if  the  Psalm  were  written  under  the  dynasty  of 
David,  but  in  w.  4,  5  the  correct  translation  is  "  went 
up,"  "  were  set." 

On  all  these  grounds  we  are  led  to  refer  the  col- 
lection Psalms  xc.-cl.,  and  even  the  origin  of  many  of 
the  pieces  it  contains,  to  a  date  subsequent  to  the 
reorganisation  of  the  theocracy  by  Ezra  and  Nehemiah, 
Avhen  we  know  that  the  Temple  service  of  song  was 
specially  provided  for.  It  does  not  follow  that  the 
collection  contains  no  ancient  songs  which  had  been 
passed  over  in  the  earlier  collections  of  Books  I.-III. 
Yet  on  more  than  one  ground  it  is  difficult  to  attach 
much  weight  to  the  titles  referrinsj  seventeen  of  its 
Psalms  to  David.  In  the  earlier  half  of  the  Psalter 
the  Davidic  Psalms  form  two  well-marked  groups  wliich 
contain  internal  evidence  that  they  were  once  separate 
collections.  It  is  indeed  hard  to  see  how  ancient  poems 
could  be  preserved  for  long  centuries  without  being  so 
collected.  But  m  Books  lY.,  Y.  there  is  no  trace  of  a 
third  collection  of  Davidic  Psalms.  Nay,  they  occur 
sporadically  up  and  down  the  books,  which  could  hardly 
have  occurred  had  the  collector  found  these  Psalms  with 
their  titles.     Acrain,  we  have  seen  in  Lecture  III.  that 


LECT.  VII.  IN  BOOK  V.  193 

the  pilgrimage  Psalms  ascribed  to  David  did  not  bear 
his  name  in  the  Septuagint,  though  the  tendency  at 
that  time  was  all  in  the  direction  of  ascribing  to  David 
as  many- poems  as  possible.  In  Psalm  cxxii.  the  title 
appears  to  have  been  suggested  by  the  name  of  David 
occurring  in  ver.  5,  though  that  verse,  which  speaks  of 
the  tln^ones  of  the  house  of  David  as  a  recollection  of  the 
past,  really  bears  clear  evidence  that  the  title  is  false. 
So  again  in  Psalm  cxliv.  10  the  singer  says,  "Thou  that 
givest  deliverance  to  kings,  who  didst  save  David  from 
the  hurtful  sword,  save  me."  Here  David  is  dis- 
tinguished from  the  Psalmist,  yet  the  mere  name  of 
David  was  enough  to  suggest  the  title  to  some  copyist. 
Such  facts  not  only  break  down  the  authority  of  the 
titles,  but  show  how  very  hasty  were  the  inferences  on 
which  they  were  adopted.  Similar  arguments  apply 
to  other  Psalms,  and  in  particular  the  argument  of 
language,  of  which  Psalm  cxxxix.  is  a  peculiarly  strong 
case.  Tliis  Psalm  belongs  to  the  period  when  Hebrew 
was  being  largely  superseded  as  a  vernacular  by 
Aramaic.  It  contains  at  least  four  Aramaic  forms 
which  are  not  such  loan-words  as  one  nation  may 
borrow  from  another  to  enrich  its  vocabulary,  but 
Aramaic  pronunciations  of  roots  also  found  in  the 
Hebrew.  The  differences  and  affinities  between  Ara- 
maic and  Hebrew  are  similar  to  those  between  English 
and  German.  By  the  rule  known  as  Grimm's  law,  old 
English  words  beginning  with  T  correspond  to  German 
words  with  Z,  so  that  English  ten  is  German  zchn,  and 


194  PSALMS  OF  lect.  vii. 

English  to  German  zu.  Now,  if  we  find  a  man  speaking 
or  writing  English  who  puts  zit  for  to  or  zelin  for  ten, 
we  know  at  once  that  German,  not  English,  is  his  ver- 
nacular. His  English  is  imperfect;  he  is  not  merely 
using  a  loan-word  like  Zeitgeist  or  any  other  German 
term  which  Englisli  writers  borrow  for  a  definite  pur- 
pose. So  it  is  in  Psalm  cxxxix.  The  Psalmist  pro- 
nounces words  with  a  guttural  ('Ayin)  when  the  Hebrew 
form  has  a  sharp  S  (^ade);  and  thus  he  declares  himself 
a  man  whose  vernacular  was  Aramaic,  as  clearly  as  the 
Ephraimites  revealed  their  tribe  by  saying  Sibholeth. 

Let  us  now  turn  back  to  the  middle  section,  con- 
sisting of  the  second  and  third  Psalm  Books,  and  let  us 
take  up  first  the  Levitical  part  of  that  section.  It  con- 
sists partly  of  songs  entitled,  "  Of  the  sons  of  Korah." 
That  does  not  necessarily  mean  songs  composed  by  the 
sons  of  Korah.  The  sons  of  Korah  were  a  guild  of 
Temple  singers,  and  the  Psalms  belonging  to  this  guild 
are  simply  a  collection  of  Psalms  wliich  they  were 
accustomed  to  sing. 

The  second  collection  of  Levitical  Psalms  bears  the 
title  of  "  Asaph."  The  sons  of  Asaph  were  also  a  guild 
of  singers.  According  to  the  Chronicles  they  had  their 
name  from  an  Asaph  who  lived  in  the  time  of  David. 
He  is  not  mentioned  in  the  earlier  books,  and  the  only 
interest  attaching  to  him  lies  in  the  guild  that  bore  his 
name.  In  Semitic  idiom  "  sons  of  Asaph  "  means  no 
more  than  the  guild  of  Asaph,  and  the  guild  taken  col- 
lectively might  also  be  simply  called  Asaph,  just  as 


LECT.  VII.  ASAPH  AND  KORAH.  195 

Jiidah  means  the  sons  of  Judah.  That  the  title  "  of 
Asaph "  does  not  imply  that  David's  Asaph  wrote  all 
the  Psalms  so  named  is  universally  admitted,  for  some 
of  these  are  certainly  late  poems.  The  Asaphic  Psalms 
are  on  the  same  footing  with  those  of  the  sons  of  Korah, 
formmg  a  second  Levitical  collection  in  the  hands  of  a 
different  guild. 

These  two  collections  have  a  curious  general  feature 
in  common.  They  contain  no  confession  of  sin.  In 
some  of  them  Israel  appears  as  divided  into  a  righteous 
class  to  whom  the  singer  belongs  and  a  wicked  class 
against  whom  he  prays.  Elsewhere,  the  whole  nation 
seems  to  speak  with  one  voice,  and  claims  to  be 
righteous,  and  suffering  not  for  its  own  sin.  Whenever 
sin  is  acknowledged  in  those  Psalms,  it  is  the  sin  of  a 
former  generation.  Now  it  is  manifest  that  this  refers 
us  to  a  very  peculiar  historical  position.  Before  the 
time  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  it  is  impossible  that  the 
really  godly  could  have  held  such  language.  Previous 
to  the  Exile,  the  prophets  and  aU  the  deeper  religious 
hearts  of  Israel  knew  well  that  all  national  sufferinj]^ 
was  chastisement  for  national  sin.  No  Israelite  before 
the  Exile  could  say  what  is  said  in  Psalm  xliv.,  and  prac- 
tically repeated  elsewhere,  that  the  people,  in  spite  of 
tlieir  afflictions,  have  not  forgotten  God  or  been  false  to 
His  covenant,  that  they  have  not  stretched  out  their 
hands  to  a  strange  god,  that  they  are  persecuted  not  for 
sin,  but  for  God's  sake,  and  because  of  their  adherence 
to  Him.     Individuals  like  Jeremiah  and  other  righteous 


196  MACCABEE  lect.  vii. 

men  complained  of  persecution  in  the  old  time,  but 
tlien  that  persecution  proceeded  from  the  godless  mass 
of  the  nation ;  whereas  here  the  complaint  is  that  the 
whole  nation  has  been  chastised — that  its  armies  have 
been  defeated,  that  Jerusalem  has  been  taken,  and  that 
the  blood  of  God's  saints  has  been  shed  like  water  round 
its  walls,  where  their  corpses  lie  unburied,  not  for  sin, 
but  for  their  adherence  to  God's  covenant.  And  with 
these  go  other  marks  of  a  late  date.  The  synagogues 
are  mentioned  in  Psalm  Ixxiv.  as  burned,  but  there  were 
no  synagogues  before  the  Exile  ;  and  prophecy  is  spoken 
of  as  having  failed.  Now  the  first  trace  of  the  feeling 
that  Israel  suffers,  not  for  sin,  but  in  spite  of  its 
obedience  to  God,  appears  in  the  propliet  Malachi ;  and 
there  the  prophet  rebukes  it  and  points  out  in  the 
clearest  way  that  in  reality  the  Israelites  were  punished 
for  their  sin.  But  here,  you  observe,  we  have  a  perse- 
cution for  religion.  That  must  be  later  than  Ezra  and 
Nehemiah — later  than  the  time  when  Israel  became  a 
law-abiding  people.  At  what  time  then  ?  The  defile- 
ment of  the  Temple  and  the  destruction  of  its 
beauty  referred  to  in  Psalms  Ixxiv.  and  Ixxix.  cannot,  so 
far  as  our  knowledge  of  the  history  goes — it  .must  be 
admitted  that  we  know  but  little  of  the  history  after 
the  time  of  Nehemiah — refer  to  any  earlier  date  than 
the  reign  of  Artaxerxes  II.,  when  the  Persian  general 
Bogoses  defiled  the  Temple  ;  but  some  of  the  features, 
and  particularly  the  fact  that  the  calamities  befalling 
Israel  are  ascribed  to  religious  persecution,  point  rather 


LECT.  VII.  PSALMS  f  197 

to  the  time  when  the  Greek  kings  sought  to  put  down 
the  spiritual  religion  of  Israel  by  force,  and  to  restore 
the  worship  of  false  gods.  This  conclusion,  indeed,  is 
refused  by  many  scholars,  and  I  do  not  put  it  forth 
categorically.  What  appears  to  be  certain  is  that  the 
Levitical  Psalms,  as  we  now  have  them,  cannot  refer  to 
any  calamity  that  fell  on  the  nation  before  the  work  of 
Ezra  and  Nehemiah. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Korahite  collection  certainly 
embodies  older  Psalms.  Psalm  xlv.  in  particular,  which 
is  the  epithalamium  of  a  king  of  Israel,  must  be  older 
than  the  Exile,  and  perhaps  was  omitted  from  the 
earlier  collections  because  its  religious  use  depends  on 
a  typical  application  to  the  Messiah. 

We  have  still  to  consider  the  two  Davidic  collec- 
tions. The  second  of  these,  as  we  now  have  it,  is 
incorporated  in  the  Elohistic  collection  which,  as  we 
have  just  seen,  was  formed  after  the  time  of  Ezra.  The 
first  Davidic  collection  stands  by  itself  as  a  separate 
Psalm  Book,  in  which,  with  the  exceptions  already 
explained,  every  Psalm  is  referred  to  David.  It  is 
plain  that,  under  these  circumstances,  the  titles  in  the 
first  Psalm  Book  have  quite  a  different  value  from  the 
scattered  titles  in  the  latter  part  of  the  Psalter.  They 
form  a  system,  and  cannot  be  referred  to  the  arbitrary 
insertions  of  successive  copyists.  Only  two  views  seem 
to  be  possible.  One  of  these  is  that  the  collector  of  Psalms 
i-xli.  may  have  deliberately  confined  himself  to  Psalms 
which  he  knew  to  be  David's.     In  that  case  two  possi- 


198  TRANSMISSION  OF  lect.  vir. 

bilities  arise.  The  Psalms  may  have  been  known  as 
David's  because  they  already  existed  in  writing  with 
titles  to  that  effect.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  col- 
lector having  satisfied  himself  that  they  were  Davidic 
may  have  added  the  titles  himself. 

But  a  different  view  is  also  possible.  The  collection 
may  not  have  been  framed  from  the  first  exclusively 
with  an  eye  to  Davidic  poems.  But  in  process  of  time 
it  may  have  come  to  be  called  "  Psalms  of  David " 
because  it  contained  some  of  his  poems,  just  as  all  the 
proverbs  are  now  called  "  Proverbs  of  Solomon."  And 
thus,  when  the  first  Psalm  Book  was  taken  up  into  a 
larger  collection,  each  Psalm  may  have  received  a  title 
derived  from  the  current  name  of  the  book  in  which  it 
was  found. 

The  question  between  these  several  possibilities 
would  be  decided,  if  we  could  show  reason  to  suppose 
that  David  wrote  down  all  his  own  Psalms,  and  prefixed 
his  name  to  them  one  by  one.  This,  however,  not  only 
cannot  be  proved,  but  is  highly  improbable  for  many 
reasons.  We  have  seen  that  the  Psalms  of  Books  IV. 
and  v.,  and  also  the  Korahite  and  Asaphic  collections, 
are  mainly  anonymous,  and  that  many  of  the  titles 
which  do  name  an  author  are  certainly  erroneous 
additions  of  copyists.  Can  we  suppose  that  later  psalm- 
ists habitually  omitted  their  names,  but  that  David  as 
habitually  used  his?  But  again,  it  is  not  in  accordance 
with  Eastern  usage  to  suppose  that  the  early  poets  of 
Israel  wrote  down  their  compositions  at  all.     Poems 


LECT.  VII.  EASTERN  POETRY.  199 

were  published,  not  in  writing,  but  by  being  sung  or 
recited.  In  the  books  of  Samuel,  David  is  said  to  have 
spoken,  not  written,  the  pieces  there  given  as  his.  That 
is  the  regular  practice  of  the  East.  The  songs  of  the 
Arabian  poets  circulated  exclusively  by  word  of  mouth, 
and  the  oldest  pieces  of  Arabic  poetry  now  extant  were 
not  written  down  for  a  century  and  a  half,  when  the 
scholars  of  Islam  collected  them  for  philological  pur- 
poses. ^^^  It  is  often  assumed,  in  connection  with  the 
account  given  in  Chronicles  of  the  institution  of  tlie 
Levitical  service  of  song,  that  David  wrote  down  his 
poems  for  the  Levites.  But  this  is  mere  assumption. 
All  Eastern  analogy,  and  the  unquestionably  late  date 
of  the  extant  Psalm  Books  of  Asaph  and  the  sons  of 
Korah,  lead  us  to  suppose  that  the  Temple  singers,  like 
the  Arabian  BdwU,  long  preserved  their  songs  by  word 
of  mouth,  and  sang  without  book.  Beyond  question, 
the  earliest  written  collections  of  poetry,  like  the  Book 
of  Jashar  and  the  Book  of  the  Wars  of  the  Lord,  were 
historical,  not  liturgical. 

These  are  general  presumptions  against  the  supposi- 
tion that  the  Psalms  were  first  published  with  their 
titles.     But  the  conclusive  arcrument  is  that  the  first 

o 

Psalm  Book  contains  pieces  which  David  certainly  did 
not  write.  Psalms  xx.  and  xxi.  are  not  spoken  by  a 
kmg,  but  addressed  to  the  king  by  his  people.  So 
viewed,  they  are  a  natural  and  beautiful  expression  of 
Israel's  faith.  But  to  suppose  that  David  wrote  for  the 
people  the  words  in  which  they  should  express  their 


200  DA  VIDIC  PSALMS  lect.  vii. 

feelings  towards  his  throne  is  to  sacrifice  the  fresh  spon- 
taneity of  the  Psalms  to  mere  theory.  Again,  in  Psalm 
xxxiv.  the  title  speaks  of  Abimelech  as  king  of  Gath 
in  the  time  of  David.  In  reality  Abimelech  was  a  con- 
temporary of  Abraham,  and  the  king  in  David's  time 
was  named  Achish.  Again,  several  of  the  Psalms  of  the 
first  book  not  only  speak  of  Zion  as  God's  holy  moun- 
tain, which  David  might  do  after  he  had  brought  the 
ark  to  Jerusalem,  but  allude  to  the  Temple,  in  w^hich  the 
singer  of  Psalm  xxvii.  desires  to  live  continually.  But 
the  House  of  God  at  Zion,  in  David's  time,  was  not  a 
temple  but  a  tent.  There  had  been  a  temple  at  Shiloh, 
but  it  was  destroyed.  And  in  Psalm  xxvii.  10,  the 
words,  "  My  father  and  my  mother  have  forsaken  me, 
but  Jehovah  taketh  me  up,"  are  quite  inappropriate 
to  David.  These  are  individual  difficulties,  but  argu- 
ments equally  strong  and  of  wider  scope  can  be  drawn 
from  the  general  situation  of  many  of  the  Psalms.  The 
singer  in  Psalms  ix.-x.  writes  after  Zion  had  become 
God's  dwelling-place.  But  he  lives  in  an  evil  time, 
when  Israel  is  oppressed  by  the  heathen  established  in 
the  land.  Under  this  oppression,  God's  people  are 
represented  as  poor  and  needy.  The  weak  and  the 
orphan  suffer  from  their  tyranny  and  pride,  and  God's 
help  has  been  so  long  withdrawn  that  they  openly  scoff 
at  His  majesty.  There  are  many  other  Psalms  in 
the  collection  which  presuppose  a  similar  situation, 
where  the  psalmist  identifies  himself  with  the  poor 
and  needy,   with   the    oppressed  righteous  people   of 


LECT.  VII.  IN  BOOK  I.  201 

God  suffering  in  silence  at  the  hands  of  the  wicked, 
who  are  strong  and  prosperous  in  the  land,  so  that 
their  victims  have  no  hope  but  to  wait  in  patient 
endurance  for  the  interposition  of  Jehovah  (xii.,  xxxv., 
xxxvii.,  xxxviii.,  etc.).  Most  of  these  Psalms  are  re- 
ferred by  the  defenders  of  the  titles  to  the  time  when 
David  w^as  pursued  by  Saul.  But  it  is  quite  unhistorical 
to  represent  Saul  as  a  man  who  persecuted  and  spoiled 
all  the  quiet  and  godly  souls  in  Israel ;  even  David  and 
his  friends  were  never  helpless  sufferers — the  quiet  or 
timid  in  the  land  (xxxv.  20),  dumb  amidst  all  oppres- 
sion (xxxviii.  13,  14).  And  such  a  Psalm  as  xxxvii., 
where  the  Psalmist  calls  himself  an  old  man,  must,  on 
the  traditional  view,  be  spoken  by  David  late  in  his 
prosperous  reign  ;  yet  here  we  have  the  same  situation — 
the  wicked  rampant,  the  righteous  suffering  in  silence, 
as  if  David  were  not  a  king  who  sat  on  his  throne  doing 
justice  and  judgment  to  all  his  people  (2  Sam.  viii.  15). 
If  Psalms  ix.,  x.,  xxxvii.  represent  the  state  of  things  in 
the  time  of  David,  the  Books  of  Samuel  are  the  most 
partial  of  histories,  and  the  reign  of  the  son  of  Jesse 
was  not  the  golden  age  which  it  appeared  to  all  subse- 
quent generations. 

These  considerations  forbid  us  to  accept  the  titles  as 
an  authoritative  part  of  the  text.  They  represent  a 
tradition  which  may  be  as  old  as  the  first  collection  of 
Psalms  i.-xli.,  but  may  equally  well  and  more  probably 
have  grown  up  round  that  collection  during  the  time 
when  it  circulated  as  a  separate  book.     The  tradition 


202  THE  SECOND  lect.  vii. 

separates  the  first  Psalm  Book  from  the  properly  Levitical 
collections,  and  doubtless  expresses  the  fact  that  these 
are  the  oldest  Psalms,  belonging  to  the  early  ages  of 
Hebrew  psalmody  from  David  downwards ;  but  in 
assigning  any  individual  psalm  to  David  we  must  be 
guided  by  other  arguments  than  those  of  the  titles. 
The  date  at  which  the  collection  was  formed  can  hardly 
be  assigned  with  precision.  The  later  books  were  col- 
lected after  the  time  of  Ezra,  but  this  contains  no  poem 
which  demands  so  recent  a  date.  Psalm  xxxi.  presents 
great  affinities  to  the  thought  and  language  of  Jeremiah, 
and  may  be  the  work  of  that  prophet.  Psalm  xiv.  is 
most  naturally  referred  to  the  Babylonian  Exile.  The 
collection  can  hardly  be  thought  to  fall  much  later. 
We  have  seen  with  what  affection  the  godly  of  Israel 
clung  to  the  words  of  the  prophets  and  their  associates 
when  the  captivity  deprived  them  of  the  outward  means 
of  grace.  In  such  a  time  the  old  Psalms  of  Zion  would 
acquire  a  new  value,  and  there  was  every  motive  to 
bring  them  together  in  as  fuU  a  collection  as  possible. 
The  prayer  for  the  redemption  of  Israel,  which  stands 
as  a  supplementary  verse  at  the  close  of  the  acrostic 
Psalm  xxv.,  may  be  read  with  great  probability  as  a 
prayer  of  the  Captivity.  ^^^ 

We  have  still  to  look  at  the  second  Davidic  col- 
lection contained  in  the  Elohistic  Psalm  Book.  This 
collection  is  later  than  Book  I.,  Psalm  liii.  being  a 
repetition  of  Psalm  xiv.,  and  Psalm  Ixx.  an  extract  from 
Psalm  xl.     The  titles,  therefore,  have  still  less  authority 


LECT.  VII.  DA  VIDIC  COLLECTION.  203 

for  us  than  those  in  the  earlier  book.  In  many  cases 
they  are  unquestionably  incorrect,  as  appears  most 
clearly  where  they  refer  to  special  events  in  David's 
life.  Psalm  lii.  is  said  to  refer  to  Doeg.  It  actually 
speaks  of  a  rich  and  powerful  man,  an  enemy  of  the 
righteous  in  Israel,  whom  God  will  lay  low,  while  the 
psalmist  is  like  a  green  olive  tree  in  the  house  of  God, 
whose  mercy  is  his  constant  support.  Now  David  had 
nothing  to  fear  from  Doeg.  The  danger  was  all  for  the 
priests  of  Nob.  How  could  the  psalmist  in  such  a  case 
confine  himself  to  thanking  God  for  his  own  deliverance, 
and  not  express  in  a  single  w^ord  his  sympathy  with  the 
unhappy  priests  who  perished  for  the  aid  they  gave 
him?  Psalm  liv.  is  said  to  be  spoken  against  the 
Zipliites.  In  reality  it  speaks  of  strangers  and  tyrants, 
standing  Old  Testament  names  for  foreign  oppressors. 
In  Psalm  Iv.  the  singer  Kves  among  foes  in  a  city  whose 
walls  they  occupy  with  their  patrols,  exercising  constant 
violence  within  the  town,  from  which  the  psalmist  would 
gladly  escape  to  the  desert.  The  enemy  is  in  alliance 
with  one  who  had  once  been  an  associate  of  the  psalmist, 
and  joined  with  him  in  the  service  of  the  sacred  feasts. 
Hence  the  Psalm  is  often  applied  to  Ahithophel ;  but 
the  whole  situation  is  as  different  as  possible.  In  Psalm 
lix.  we  are  asked  to  find  a  psalm  composed  by  David 
when  he  was  watched  in  his  house  by  Saul.  In  reality 
the  singer  speaks  of  heathen  foes  besieging  the  city — 
i.e.,  Jerusalem — whom  God  is  prayed  to  cast  down,  that 
His  power,  may  be  manifest  over  all  the  earth.     It  is 


204  EARL  V  PSALMOD  V  lect.  vii. 

impossible  to  attach  authority  to  a  group  of  titles  so 
full  of  palpable  incongruities;  and,  apart  from  the  titles, 
it  is  difficult  to  find  sufficient  ground  for  ascribing  a 
single  psalm  of  the  second  collection  to  David.  Even 
Delitzsch,  the  able  defender  of  the  general  correctness  of 
the  headings,  admits  that  David  was  not  the  author  of 
Psalms  Ixv.  and  Ixix.,  and  hesitates  as  to  some  of  the 
others/'^^ 

The  general  result  of  this  discussion  is  not  purely 
negative.  We  are  unable  to  accept  the  titles  as  our 
guide  to  the  historical  study  of  the  Psalms,  because  they 
are  often  inconsistent  with  the  far  more  valuable  evi- 
dence of  the  sacred  poems  themselves.  The  titles  would 
be  authoritative  if  they  were  as  old  as  the  Psalms; 
but  in  fact  some  of  them  are  the  mere  conjectures  of 
individual  copyists,  and  even  in  the  two  great  collec- 
tions of  poems  ascribed  to  David  there  is  no  proof 
that  they  express  a  tradition  earlier  than  the  formation 
of  these  collections.  But  it  is  noteworthy  that  the 
earliest  Psalm  Book  was  received  in  the  Jewish  Church 
as  a  Davidic  hymnal.  This  opinion  was  not  based  on 
authentic  knowledge  that  every  Psalm  in  the  collection 
is  really  David's ;  for  some  of  the  Psalms  are  certaraly 
of  later  date.  But  the  tradition  expresses  a  conviction 
that  David  was  closely  connected  with  the  early 
psalmody  of  Israel.  There  is  little  direct  evidence  in 
the  old  Hebrew  literature  to  support  this  conviction. 
In  the  Books  of  Samuel  the  king  is  never  lost  in  the 
psalmist,  as  is  the  case  in  the  current  conception  of 


LECT.  VII.  IN  ISRAEL.  205 

David's  life;  and  when  we  observe  that  the  two  hymns 
in  2  Sam.  xxii.,  xxiiL  appear  to  be  foreign  to  the  original 
context  of  the  narrative,  it  may  appear  doubtful  whether 
the  oldest  story  of  his  life  set  forth  David  as  a  psalmist 
at  all.  It  is  very  curious  that  the  book  of  Amos  (vi.  5) 
represents  David  as  the  chosen  model  of  the  dilettanti 
nobles  of  Ephraim,  who  lay  stretched  on  beds  of 
ivory,  anointed  with  the  choicest  perfumes,  and 
mingling  music  with  their  cups  in  the  familiar  manner 
of  oriental  luxury.  Yet  we  know  that  David  tool?:  a 
personal  part  in  the  procession  which  brought  the  ark 
up  to  Jerusalem  with  music  and  dance  (2  Sam.  vi.). 
Dancing,  music,  and  song  are  in  early  times  the  united 
expression  of  lyrical  inspiration.  Sacred  melody  was 
accompanied  by  dances  in  the  days  of  Miriam,  and 
even  in  the  time  of  the  latest  Psalms  (cxlix.  3,  cl.  4). 
We  have  every  right  to  conclude  that  the  lyrical  talents 
of  Israel's  most  gifted  singer  were  devoted  to  the  service 
of  Jehovah,  which  King  David  placed  high  above  all 
considerations  of  royal  dignity  (2  Sam.  vi.  21).  But 
the  passage  makes  it  clear  that  in  those  days  religion 
was  not  separated  from  ordin-ary  life,  and  that  the 
gladness  of  the  believing  heart  found  natural  uttemnce 
in  sportful  forms  of  unconstrained  mirth.  At  a  much 
later  date,  as  we  have  seen,  melodies  of  the  Temple 
service  were  borrowed  from  the  joyous  songs  of  the 
vintage,  and  so  it  was  possible  that  David  should  give 
the  pattern  alike  for  the  songs  of  the  sanctuary  and  for 
the  worldly  airs  of  the  nobles  of  Samaria.  The  sacred 
10 


206  TYPOLOGY  OF  lect.  vii. 

music  of  Israel  was  of  popular  origin,  and  long  retained 
its  popular  type  (Amos  v.  23;  Isa.  xxx.  29;  Jerem. 
xxxiii.  11).  On  tlie  solemn  feast  days  the  Temple 
resounded  with  clamours  like  those  of  a  conquering 
army  (Lam.  ii.  7).  A  sacred  poetry  of  such  popular 
origin  must  necessarily  reflect  the  religious  life,  not  of 
one  or  two  great  poets,  but  of  Israel  as  a  nation  in  all 
the  vicissitudes  of  a  long  history;  and  a  judicious 
criticism  learns  to  seek  in  the  Psalter,  not  merely  the 
autobiography  of  David,  but  a  long  and  weighty 
chapter  in  the  life  of  the  Old  Testament  Church. 

That  this  standpoint  enables  us  to  expound  many 
Psalms  with  far  more  force  and  truth  than  the  tradi- 
tional exegesis  can  only  be  proved  in  a  detailed  com- 
mentary.    I  allude,  in  closing,  only  to  two  points. 

Christian  theology  has  always  been  largely  occupied 
with  the  typical  references  of  the  Psalms,  following  the 
authority  of  our  Lord  Himself,  who  read  in  the  Psalter 
the  pattern  of  His  own  experience  as  the  founder  of  the 
New  Dispensation.  So  long  as  the  primary  reference 
of  so  large  a  part  of  the  Psalms  was  confined  to  the 
experiences  of  David's  life,  the  typical  interpretation 
often  seemed  arbitrary.  It  was  not  possible  to  estab- 
lish a  principle  of  real  connection  between  the  events 
of  David's  life  and  the  experiences  of  our  Lord  which 
they  foreshadowed.  But  the  newer  exegesis  observes 
that  in  many  of  these  typical  Psalms  the  primary 
reference  is  not  to  events  of  an  individual  life,  but  to 
the  experience  of  God's  people  as  a  whole,  who  speak 


LECT.  VII.  THE  PSALMS.  207 

by  personification  with  a  single  voice.  And  thus  tlie 
typical  reference  becomes  easy  and  natural.  For  our 
Lord  as  the  Head  of  the  Church,  the  Captain  of  the 
faithful,  who  takes  on  Him  the  whole  burden  of  His 
people,  and  stands  as  their  representative  before  the 
Father,  can  appropriate  to  Himself  the  whole  experience 
of  the  Old  Testament  Church,  in  so  far  as  the  life  of 
that  Church  is  a  part  of  the  life  of  the  Church 
Universal  of  which  He  is  the  Head. 

Another  point  in  which  criticism  removes  a  serious 
difficulty  is  the  interpretation  of  the  imprecatory 
Psalms,  ^vhich  can  never  be  explained  as  having  a 
private  reference  to  David  without  introducing  an 
element  of  personal  vindictiveness  of  a  kind  greatly 
calculated  to  give  offence.  The  injuries  done  to  David 
by  Ahithophel  and  others,  to  whom  these  Psalms  are 
currently  supposed  to  refer,  were  largely  personal. 
David  could  not  say  that  he  was  persecuted  as  the 
representative  of  God's  cause  in  Israel,  and  without  sm 
on  his  part.  On  any  interpretation,  these  Psalms  bear, 
more  than  most  others,  the  impress  of  the  limitations  of 
the  Old  Covenant ;  but  at  least  the  element  of  personal 
vindictiveness  disappears  when  we  assign  them,  as  we 
have  every  right  to  do,  to  later  times  of  persecution, 
when  the  fortunes  at  stake  were  not  those  of  an  indivi- 
dual, but  of  the  cause  of  God's  truth  against  treachery 
within  and  persecuting  heathenism  without. 


208  TRADITIONAL  VIEW  lect.  viii. 


LECTUEE   Vin. 

THE  TRADITIONAL  THEORY  OF  THE 
OLD   TESTAMENT  HISTORy/^^ 

The  book  of  Psalms  has  furnished  us  with  an  example 
of  what  can  be  learned  by  critical  study  in  a  subject 
of  limited  compass,  which  can  be  profitably  discussed 
without  any  wide  digression  into  general  questions  of 
Old  Testament  history.  The  criticism  of  the  Prophets 
and  the  Law  opens  a  much  larger  field,  and  brings  us 
face  to  face  with  fundamental  problems. 

We  know,  as  a  matter  of  historical  fact,  that  the 
Pentateuch,  as  a  whole,  was  put  into  operation  as  the 
rule  of  Israel's  life  at  the  reformation  of  Ezra,  with  a 
completeness  which  had  never  been  aimed  at  from  the 
days  of  the  conquest  of  Canaan  {sujpra,  p.  56).  Erom 
this  time  onwards  the  Pentateuch,  in  its  ceremonial 
as  well  as  its  moral  precepts,  was  the  acknowledged 
standard  of  Israel's  righteousness  (Neh.  xiii.;  Mai.  i.  7, 
seq. ;  iii.  8,  seq.^  iv.  4 ;  Acts  xv.  5).  According  to  the 
theory  of  the  later  Jews,  which  has  passed  into  current 
Christian  theology,  it  had  always  been  so.  The  whole 
law  of  the  Pentateuch  was  given  in  the  wilderness, 
or  on  the  plains  of  Moab  and  Moses  conveved  to  the 


LECT.  VIII.  OF  THE  LA  W.  209 

Israelites  before  they  entered  Canaan,  everything  that 
it  was  necessary  for  them  to  know  as  a  revelation  from 
God.  The  law  was  a  rule  of  absolute  validity,  and 
the  keeping  of  it  was  the  whole  of  Israel's  religion. 
No  religion  could  be  acceptable  to  God  which  was  not 
conformed  to  the  legal  ordinances.  On  this  theory  the 
ceremonial  part  of  the  law  must  always  have  been  the 
prominent  and  most  characteristic  feature  of  the  Old 
Covenant.  In  the  Levitical  legislation,  the  feasts,  the 
sacrificial  ritual,  the  ordinances  of  ceremonial  purity,  are 
always  in  the  foreground  as  the  necessary  forms  in 
which  alone  the  inner  side  of  religion,  love  to  God  and 
man,  can  find  acceptable  expression.  Not  that  religion 
is  made  up  of  mere  forms,  but  everything  in  religion  is 
reduced  to  rule  and  has  some  fixed  ceremonial  expres- 
sion.    There  is  no  room  for  religious  spontaneity. 

According  to  this  theory,  it  is  not  possible  to  dis- 
tinguish between  ceremonial  and  moral  precepts  of  the 
law,  as  if  the  observance  of  the  latter  might  excuse 
irregularity  in  the  former.  The  object  of  God's  covenant 
with  Israel  was  to  maintain  a  close  and  constant  bond 
between  Jehovah  and  His  people,  different  in  kind  from 
the  relations  of  mankind  in  general  to  their  Creator. 
Israel  was  chosen  to  be  a  holy  people.  Now,  according 
to  the  Pentateuch,  holiness  is  not  exclusively  a  moral 
thing.  It  has  special  relation  to  the  observances  of 
ritual  worship  and  ceremonial  purity.  "  Ye  shall  dis- 
tinguish between  clean  beasts  and  unclean,  and  not 
make  yourselves  abominable  by  any  beast,  fowl,  etc., 


210  SYSTEM  OF  lect.  viii. 

whicli  I  have  separated  from  you  as  unclean.  And  ye 
shall  be  holy  unto  me :  for  I  Jehovah  am  holy,  and 
have  severed  you  from  the  nations  to  be  mine"  (Lev. 
XX.  25,  26).  If  a  sacrifice  is  eaten  on  the  third  day,  "it 
is  abominable ;  it  shall  not  be  accepted.  He  that  eateth 
it  shall  bear  his  guilt,  for  he  hath  profaned  Jehovah's 
holy  thing  :  that  soul  shall  be  cut  off  from  his  people  " 
(Lev.  xix.  8).  "  That  which  dieth  of  itself,  or  is  torn  of 
beasts,  no  priest  may  eat  to  defile  himself  therewith.  I 
am  Jehovah;  and  the)'"  shall  keep  my  ordinance  and 
not  take  sin  on  themselves  by  profaning  it  and  die 
therein.  I  Jehovah  do  sanctify  them  "  (Lev.  xxii.  8,  9). 
No  stronger  words  than  these  could  be  found  to  de- 
nounce the  gravest  moral  turpitude. 

The  whole  system  is  directed  to  the  maintenance  of 
holiness  in  Israel,  as  the  condition  of  the  benefits  which 
Jehovah  promises  to  bestow  on  His  people  in  the  land 
of  Canaan.  And  therefore  every  infringement  of  law, 
be  it  merely  in  some  point  of  ceremony  which  we  might 
be  disposed  to  think  indifferent,  demands  an  atonement, 
that  the  relation  of  God  to  His  people  may  not  be 
disturbed.  To  provide  such  atonement  is  the  great 
object  of  the  priestly  ritual  which  culminates  in  the 
annual  ceremony  of  the  day  of  expiation.  Atonement 
implies  sacrifice,  the  blood  or  life  -of  an  offering  pre- 
sented on  the  altar  before  God.  "  It  is  the  blood  that 
atones  by  the  life  that  is  in  it"  (Lev.  xvii.  11 ;  Hebrews 
ix.  22).  But  the  principle  of  holiness  demands  that  the 
sacrificial  act  itself,  and  the  altar  on  which  the  blood 


LECT.  VIII.  PRIESTLY  ATONEMENT,  211 

is  offered,  be  hedged  round  by  strict  ritual  pre- 
cautions. At  the  altar,  Jehovah,  in  His  awful  and 
inaccessible  holiness,  meets  with  the  people,  wliich  is 
imperfectly  holy  and  stands  in  need  of  constant  for- 
giveness. There  is  danger  in  such  a  meeting.  Only 
the  priests,  who  live  under  rules  of  intensified  cere- 
monial purity,  and  have  received  a  peculiar  consecration 
from  Jehovah  Himself,  are  permitted  to  touch  the  holy 
tilings,  and  it  is  they  who  bear  the  sins  of  Israel  before 
God  to  make  atonement  for  them  (Lev.  x.  17).  Between 
them  and  Israel  at  large  is  a  second  cordon  of  holy 
ministers,  the  Levites.  It  is  death  for  any  but  a  priest 
to  touch  the  altar,  and  an  undue  approach  of  ordinary 
persons  to  the  sanctuary  brings  wi'ath  on  Israel  (Num. 
i.  53).  Accordingly,  sacrifice,  atonement,  and  forgive- 
ness of  sin  are  absolutely  dependent  on  the  hierarchy 
and  its  service.  The  mass  of  the  people  have  no  direct 
access  to  their  God  in  the  sanctuary.  The  maintenance 
of  the  Old  Testament  covenant  depends  on  the  priestly 
mediation,  and  above  all  on  that  one  annual  day  of  expia- 
tion when  the  high  priest  enters  the  Holy  of  Holies  and 
"  cleanses  the  people  that  they  may  be  clean  from  all 
their  sins  before  Jehovah "  (Lev.  xvi.  30).  The  whole 
system,  you  perceive,  is  strictly  knit  together.  The 
details  are  necessary  to  the  object  aimed  at.  The  inter- 
mission of  any  part  of  the  ceremonial  scheme  involves 
an  accumulation  of  unforgiven  sin,  with  the  conse- 
quence of  divine  wrath  on  the  nation  and  the  with- 
draw^al  of  God's  favour. 


212  SYSTEM  OF  lect.  viii. 

To  complete  this  sketch  of  the  theory  of  the  Penta- 
teuch it  is  only  necessary  to  add  that  the  hierarchy  had 
no  dispensing  power.  If  a  man  sins,  he  has  recourse  to 
the  sacramental  sacrifice  appointed  for  his  case.  The 
priest  makes  atonement  for  him,  and  he  is  forgiven. 
But  knowingly  and  obstinately  to  depart  from  any 
ordinance  is  to  sin  against  God  with  a  high  hand,  and 
for  this  there  is  no  forgiveness.  "  He  hath  despised  the 
word  of  the  Lord  and  broken  his  commandment :  that 
soul  shall  be  cut  off  in  its  guilt"  (Num.  xv.  30,  31). 

Such  is  the  system  of  the  law  as  contained  particu- 
larly in  the  middle  books  of  the  Pentateuch,  and 
practically  accepted  from  the  days  of  Ezra.  It  is  not 
strange  that  the  later  Jews  should  have  received  it  as 
the  sum  of  all  revelation,  for  manifestly  it  is  a  com- 
plete theory  of  the  religious  life.  Its  aim  is  to  provide 
every  tiling  that  man  requires  to  live  acceptably  with 
God,  the  necessary  measure  of  access  to  Jehovah,  the 
necessary  atonement  for  all  sin,  and  the  necessary 
channel  for  the  conveyance  of  God's  blessing  to  man. 
It  is,  I  repeat,  a  complete  theory  of  the  religious  life,  to 
which  nothing  can  be  added  without  an  entire  change 
of  dispensation.  Accordingly,  the  Jewish  view  of  the 
law  as  complete,  and  the  summary  of  all  revelation,  has 
passed  into  Christian  theology,  with  only  this  modi- 
fication that,  whereas  the  Jews  think  of  the  dispensation 
of  the  law  as  final,  and  the  atonement  which  it  offers  as 
sufficient,  we  have  learned  to  regard  the  dispensation  as 
temporary  and  its  atonement  as  typical,  prefiguring  the 


LECT.  VIII.  THE  LA  IV.  213 

atonement  of  Christ.  But  this  modification  of  the 
Jewish  view  of  the  Torah  does  not  diminish  the  essen- 
tial importance  of  the  law  for  the  life  of  the  old 
dispensation.  The  ceremonies  were  not  less  necessary 
because  they  were  typical;  for  they  are  still  to  be 
regarded  as  divinely  appointed  means  of  grace,  to  which 
alone  God  had  attached  the  promise  of  blessing. 

Now,  as  soon  as  we  lay  down  the  position  that  the 
system  of  the  ceremonial  law,  embracing,  as  it  does,  the 
whole  life  of  every  Jew,  was  completed  and  prescribed 
as  an  authoritative  code  for  Israel  before  the  conquest  of 
Canaan,  we  have  an  absolute  rule  for  measuring  the  whole 
future  history  of  the  nation  and  the  whole  significance 
of  subsequent  revelation  under  the  Old  Testament. 

On  the  one  hand,  the  religious  history  of  Israel  can 
be  nothing  else  than  the  liistory  of  the  nation's  obedi- 
ence or  disobedience  to  the  law.  Notliing  could  be 
added  to  the  law  and  nothing  taken  from  it  till  the 
time  of  fulfilment,  when  the  type  should  pass  away 
and  be  replaced  by  ihe  living  reality  of  the  manifesta- 
tion of  Christ  Jesus.  So  long  as  the  old  dispensation 
lasted,  the  law  remained  an  absolute  standard.  The 
Israelite  had  no  right  to  draw  a  distinction  between  the 
spirit  and  the  letter  of  the  law.  The  sacrifices  and 
other  typical  ordinances  might  not  be  of  the  essence  of 
religion.  But  obedience  to  God's  word  undoubtedly 
was  so,  and  that  word  had  in  the  most  emphatic  manner 
enjoined  the  sacrifices  and  other  ceremonies,  and  made 
the  forgiveness  of  Israel's  sins  to  depend  on  them.     The 


214  THE  PROPHETS  lect.  viii. 

priestly  atonement  was  a  necessary  part  of  God's  covenant. 
"  The  priest  shall  make  atonement  for  him,  and  he  shall  be 
forgiven."  To  neglect  these  means  of  grace  is,  according 
to  the  Pentateuch,  nothing  less  than  the  sin  committed 
with  a  high  hand,  for  which  there  is  no  forgiveness. 

Again,  on  the  other  hand,  the  position  that  the  whole 
legal  system  was  revealed  to  Israel  at  the  very  begin- 
ning of  its  national  existence  strictly  limits  our  concep- 
tion of  the  function  and  significance  of  subsequent 
revelation.  The  prophets  had  no  power  to  abrogate 
any  part  of  the  law,  to  dispense  with  Mosaic  ordinances, 
or  institute  new  means  of  grace,  other  methods  of 
approach  to  God  in  lieu  of  the  hierarchical  sacraments. 
For  the  Old  Testament  way  of  atonement  is  set  forth  in 
the  Pentateuch  as  adequate  and  efficient.  According  to 
Christian  theology,  its  efficiency  as  a  typical  system  was 
conditional  on  the  future  bringing  in  of  a  perfect  atone- 
ment in  Christ.  But  for  that  very  reason  it  was  not  to 
be  tampered  with  until  Christ  came.  The  prophets, 
like  the  law  itself,  could  only  point  to  a  future  atone- 
ment ;  they  were  not  themselves  saviours,  and  could  do 
nothing  to  diminish  the  need  for  the  temporary  pro- 
visions of  the  hierarchical  system ;  and,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  prophets  did  not  abolish  the  Pentateuch  or  any 
part  of  the  Levitical  system.  Nay,  it  is  just  as  their 
work  closes  that  we  find  the  Pentateuchal  code  solemnly 
advance  to  a  position  of  public  authority  under  Ezra 
which  it  had  never  held  before. 

Hence  the  traditional  view  of  the  Pentateuch  neces- 


LECT.  VIII.  AND  THE  LA  W.  215 

sarily  regards  the  prophets  as  ministers  and  exponents 
of  the  law.  Their  business  was  to  enforce  the  observ- 
ance of  the  law  on  Israel  and  to  recall  the  people  from 
backsliding  to  a  strict  conformity  with  its  precepts. 
According  to  the  Jewish  view,  this  makes  their  work  less 
necessary  and  eternal  than  the  law.  Christian  theo- 
logians avoid  this  inference,  but  they  do  so  by  laying 
stress  on  the  fact  that  the  reference  to  a  future 
and  perfect  atonement,  which  lay  implicitly  in  the 
typical  ordinances  of  the  ceremonial  law,  was  unfolded 
by  the  prophets  in  the  clear  language  of  evangelical 
prediction.  We  view  the  prophets,  therefore,  as  ex- 
ponents of  the  spiritual  elements  of  the  law,  who  showed 
the  people  that  its  precepts  were  not  mere  forms  but 
veiled  declarations  of  the  spiritual  truths  of  a  future 
dispensation  which  was  the  true  substance  of  the 
shadows  of  the  old  ritual.  This  theory  of  the  work  of 
the  prophets  is  much  more  profound  than  that  of  the 
Eabbins.  But  it  implies,  as  necessarily  as  the  Jewish 
view,  that  the  prophets  were  constantly  intent  on  en- 
forcing the  observance  of  the  ceremonial  as  well  as  the 
moral  precepts  of  the  Pentateuch.  Neglect  of  the 
ritual  law  was  all  the  more  culpable  when  the  spiritual 
meaning  of  its  precepts  was  made  plain. 

I  think  that  it  will  be  admitted  that  in  this  sketch 
I  have  correctly  indicated  the  theory  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment dispensation  which  orthodox  theologians  derive 
from  the  traditional  view  as  to  the  date  of  the  Penta- 
teuch.    I  ask  you  to  observe  that  it  is  essentially  the 


216  CRITICISM  AND  lect.  viii. 

Eabbinical  view  supplemented  by  a  theory  of  typology ; 
but  I  also  ask  you  to  observe  that  it  is  perfectly  logical 
and  consistent  in  all  its  parts.  It  is,  so  far  as  one  can 
see,  tbe  only  theory  which  can  be  built  on  the  premisses. 
It  has  only  one  fault.  The  standard  which  it  applies 
to  the  history  of  Israel  is  not  that  of  the  contemporary 
historical  records,  and  the  account  which  it  gives  of  the 
work  of  the  prophets  is  not  consistent  with  the  writings 
of  the  prophets  themselves. 

This  may  seem  a  strong  statement,  but  it  is  not 
lightly  made,  and  it  expresses  no  mere  personal  opinion, 
but  the  growipg  conviction  of  an  overwhelming  weight 
of  the  most  earnest  and  sober  scholarship.  The  dis- 
crepancy between  the  traditional  view  of  the  Penta- 
teuch and  the  plain  statements  of  the  historical  books 
and  the  Prophets  is  so  marked  and  so  fundamental  that 
it  can  be  made  clear  to  every  reader  of  Scripture.  It 
is  this  fact  which  compels  us,  in  the  interests  of  prac- 
tical theology — nay  even  in  the  interests  of  Christian 
apologetic — to  go  into  questions  of  Pentateuch  criticism. 
For  if  the  received  view  which  assigns  the  whole  Penta- 
teuch to  Moses  is  inconsistent  with  the  concordant 
testimony  of  the  Earlier  and  Later  Prophets,  we  are 
brought  into  this  dilemma  : — Either  the  Old  Testament 
is  not  the  record  of  a  self-consistent  scheme  of  revela- 
tion, of  one  great  and  continuous  work  of  a  revealing 
and  redeeming  God,  or  else  the  current  view  of  the 
origin  of  the  Pentateuch  must  be  given  up.  Here  it  is 
that  criticism  comes  in  to  solve  a  problem  which  in  its 


LECT.  VIII.  THE  LA  IV.  217 


origin  is  not  merely  critical,  but  springs  of  necessity 
from  the  very  attempt  to  understand  the  Old  Testament 
dispensation  as  a  whole.  For  the  contradiction  which 
cannot  be  resolved  on  traditional  assumptions  is  at  once 
removed  when  the  critic  points  out  within  the  Penta- 
teuch itself  clear  marks  that  the  whole  law  was  not 
written  at  one  time,  and  that  the  several  documents  of 
which  it  is  composed  represent  successive  developments 
of  the  fundamental  principles  laid  down  by  Moses, 
successive  redactions  of  the  sacred  law  of  Israel  corre- 
sponding to  the  very  same  stages  in  the  progress  of 
revelation  which  are  clearly  marked  in  the  history  and 
the  prophetic  literature.  Thus  the  apparent  discordance 
between  the  several  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  record 
is  removed,  and  we  are  able  to  see  a  consistent  divine 
purpose  ruling  the  whole  dispensation  of  the  Old  Cove- 
nant, and  harmoniously  displayed  in  every  part  of  the 
sacred  record.  To  develop  this  argument  in  its  essential 
features,  fitting  the  several  parts  of  the  record  into  their 
proper  setting  in  the  history  of  revelation,  is  the  object 
which  I  propose  for  our  discussion  of  the  Law  and  the 
Prophets.  Of  the  critical  or  constructive  part  of  the 
argument  I  can  give  only  the  main  outlines,  for  many 
details  in  the  analysis  of  the  Pentateuch  turn  on  nice 
questions  of  Hebrew  scholarship.  But  the  results  are 
broad  and  intelligible,  and  possess  that  evidence  of 
historical  consistency  on  which  the  results  of  special 
scholarship  are  habitually  accepted  by  the  mass  of 
intelligent  men  in  other  branches  of  historical  inquiry. 


218  THE  LA  W  AND  lect.  viii. 

Such,  then,  is  the  plan  of  our  investigation ;  and, 
first  of  all,  let  us  compare  the  evidence  of  the  Bible 
history  with  the  traditional  theory  already  sketched. 
In  working  out  this  part  of  the  subject  I  shall  confine 
your  attention  in  the  first  instance  to  the  books  earlier 
than  the  time  of  Ezra,  and  in  particular  to  the  histories 
in  the  Earlier  Prophets,  from  Judges  to  Second  Kings. 
I  exclude  the  book  of  Joshua  because  it  in  all  its  parts 
hangs  closely  together  with  the  Pentateuch.  The  diffi- 
culties which  it  presents  are  identical  with  those  of  the 
Books  of  Moses,  and  can  only  be  explained  in  connection 
with  the  critical  analysis  of  the  law.  And,  on  the  other 
hand,  I  exclude  for  the  present  the  narrative  of  Chron- 
icles, which  was  written  long  after  the  reformation  of 
Ezra,  and  has  not  the  character  of  a  primary  source  for 
the  earlier  history.  The  earlier  historical  books  from 
Judges  to  Kings  bring  down  the  history  in  continuous 
form  to  the  Captivity,  and  attained  their  final  shape 
soon  after  that  event.  But  the  great  mass  of  the  records 
which  they  embody  is  much  earlier.  We  have  already 
seen  {supra,  p.  123  seq^.)  that  they  are  in  part  based  on 
official  annals,  while  in  great  part  they  are  made  up  in 
accordance  with  the  system  already  explained,  on  which 
Hebrew  historians  were  wont  verbally  to  incorporate 
older  documents  in  their  narratives.  Thus  in  substance 
they  are  vastly  older  than  the  Chronicles,  and  possess 
many  essential  characteristics  of  contemporary  histories. 
It  is  the  rule  of  aU  historical  study  to  begin  with  the 
records  that  stand  nearest  to  the  events  recorded,  and 


LECT.  vm.  THE  HISTORY.  219 

are  written  under  the  Kving  impress  of  the  life  of  the 
time  described.  Many  features  of  the  old  Hebrew  life, 
which  are  reflected  in  lively  form  in  the  Earlier  Pro- 
phets, were  obsolete  long  before  the  time  of  the 
Chronicler,  and  could  not  be  revived  except  by  archaeo- 
logical research.  The  whole  life  of  the  old  kingdom 
was  buried  and  forgotten ;  Israel  was  no  longer  a  nation, 
but  a  municipality  and  a  church.  No  theory  of  inspir- 
ation, save  the  theory  of  the  Koran,  which  boasts  that 
its  fabulous  legends  were  supernaturally  conveyed  to 
Mohammed  without  the  use  of  documents  or  tradition, 
can  deny  that  a  history  written  under  these  conditions 
is  but  a  secondary  source  for  the  study  of  the  life  of  the 
ancient  kingdom.  ^^^  It  is  manifest  that  the  Chronicler, 
writing  at  a  time  when  the  institutions  of  Ezra  had 
universal  currency,  had  no  complete  knowledge  of  the 
greatly  different  praxis  of  Israel  before  the  Exile.  And 
therefore,  when  his  statements  seem  to  present  the 
history  in  a  somewhat  different  light  from  those  of  the 
earlier  books,  we  must  no  more  take  him  as  our  com- 
mentator than  we  take  S.  Paul  as  our  guide  to  the  Old 
Testament  chronology.  We  must  let  the  earlier  books 
speak  for  themselves,  and  the  right  understanding  of 
the  statement  of  the  Chronicles  must  then  be  considered 
as  a  separate  question.  I  do  not  now  speak  of  indi- 
vidual details,  in  which  the  later  history  may  often 
preserv^e  some  useful  notice  derived  from  sources  no 
longer  extant.  Our  present  concern  is  with  the  general 
picture  of  the  life  and  worship  of  ancient  Israel  pre- 


220  THE  DISOBEDIENCE  lect.  viii. 

sented  in  the  historical  books ;  and  here  the  only  rule  of 
sound  study  is  to  begin  with  the  sources  which  draw 
from  the  life. 

Every  reader  of  the  Old  Testament  history  is  familiar 
with  the  fact  that  from  the  days  of  the  Judges  down 
to  the  Exile  the  law  was  never  strictly  enforced  in 
Israel.  The  history  is  a  record  of  constant  rebellion 
and  shortcomings,  and  the  attempts  at  reformation  made 
from  time  to  time  were  comparatively  few  and  never 
thoroughly  carried  out.  The  deflections  of  the  nation 
from  the  standard  of  the  Pentateuch  come  out  most 
clearly  in  the  sphere  of  worship.  In  the  time  of  the 
Judges  the  religious  condition  of  the  nation  was  admit- 
tedly one  of  anarchy.  The  leaders  of  the  nation, 
divinely  appointed  deliverers  like  Gideon  and  Jephthah, 
who  were  zealous  in  Jehovah's  cause,  were  as  far  from 
the  Pentateuchal  standard  of  righteousness  as  the  mass 
of  the  people.  Gideon  erects  a  sanctuary  at  Ophrah, 
with  a  golden  ephod — apparently  a  kind  of  image — 
which  became  a  great  centre  of  illegal  w^orship  (Jud. 
viii.  24  se,q})\  Jephthah  offers  his  own  daughter  to 
Jehovah ;  the  Lord  departs  from  Samson,  not  when  he 
marries  a  daughter  of  the  uncircumcised,  but  when  his 
Nazarite  locks  are  shorn. 

The  revival  imder  Samuel,  Saul,  and  David  was 
marked  by  great  zeal  for  Jehovah,  but  brought  no 
reform  in  matters  of  glaring  departure  from  the  law. 
Samuel  sacrifices  on  many  high  places,  Saul  builds 
altars,  David  and  his  son  Solomon  permit  the  worship 


LECT.  VIII.  OF  ISRAEL.  221 

at  the  high  places  to  continue,  and  the  historian  recog- 
nises this  as  legitimate  because  the  Temple  was  not  yet 
built  (1  Kings  iii.  2-4).  In  Northern  Israel  this  state 
of  things  was  never  changed.  The  high  places  were  an 
established  feature  in  the  kingdom  of  Ephraim,  and 
Elijah  himself  declares  that  the  destruction  of  the  altars 
of  Jehovah — aU  illegitimate  according  to  the  Penta- 
teuch— is  a  breach  of  Jehovah's  covenant  (1  Kings  xLx. 
10).  In  the  Southern  Kingdom  it  was  not  otherwise. 
It  is  recorded  of  the  best  kings  before  Hezekiah  that  the 
high  places  were  not  removed  by  them ;  and  in  the 
eighth  century  B.C.  the  prophets  describe  the  worship 
of  Ephraim  and  Judah  in  terms  practically  identical. 
Even  the  reforms  of  Hezekiah  and  Josiah  were  im- 
perfectly carried  through;  and  important  points  of 
ritual,  such  as  the  due  observance  of  the  Eeast  of 
Tabernacles,  were  still  neglected  (Neh.  viii.  17).  These 
facts  are  not  disputed.  The  question  is  how  we  are  to 
interpret  them. 

The  prophets  and  the  historical  books  agree  in 
representing  the  history  of  Israel  as  a  long  record  of 
disobedience  to  Jehovah,  of  which  captivity  was  the 
just  punishment.  But  the  precise  nature  of  Israel's  sin 
is  often  misunderstood.  We  are  accustomed  to  speak 
of  it  as  idolatry,  as  the  worship  of  false  gods  in  place 
of  Jehovah;  and  in  a  certain  sense  this  corresponds 
with  the  language  of  the  sacred  books.  In  the  judg- 
ment of  the  prophets  of  the  eighth  century  the  mass  of 
the  Israelites,  not  merely  in  the  Northern  Kingdom  but 


222  WORSHIP  IN  THE  lect.  viii. 

equally  in  Judali,  had  rebelled  against  Jehovah,  and  did 
did  not  pay  Him  worship  in  any  true  sense.  But  that 
was  far  from  being  the  opinion  of  the  false  worshippers 
themselves.  They  were  not  in  conscious  rebellion 
against  Jehovah  and  His  covenant.  On  the  contrary, 
their  religion  was  based  on  two  principles,  one  of  which 
is  the  fundamental  principle  of  all  Old  Testament  reve- 
lation, while  the  second  is  the  principle  that  underlies 
the  whole  system  of  ritual  ordinance  in  the  Pentateuch. 
The  first  principle  in  the  popular  religion  of  Israel, 
acknowledged  by  the  false  worshippers  as  well  as  by 
the  prophets,  was  that  Jehovah  is  Israel's  God  and 
Eedeemer,  and  that  Israel  is  the  people  of  Jehovah 
in  a  distinctive  sense.  And  with  this  went  a  second 
principle,  that  Israel  is  bound  to  do  homage  to  its  God 
in  sacrifice,  and  to  serve  Him  diligently  and  assiduously 
according  to  a  fixed  ritual. 

Let  me  explain  this  point  more  fully.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  the  worship  of  Baal,  Ashtoreth,  Moloch,  and 
other  gods  of  the  heathen  peoples  of  Canaan  was  not 
uncommon  in  Israel ;  and  once  at  least,  in  the  time  of 
Ahab,  there  was  an  attempt  to  give  such  worship  a 
national  character ;  but  as  a  rule  such  worship  took  a 
secondary  place,  and  those  who  fell  into  it  did  not  do 
so  to  the  exclusion  of  the  worship  of  Jehovah  as  the 
great  God  of  Israel.  And  the  attempt  of  Ahab  was 
purely  transitory.  It  was  put  down  by  a  great  revolu- 
tion under  Jehu ;  and  even  Ahab  himself,  as  we  learn 
from   1   Kings   xxii.,   never   entirely   broke   with   the 


LECT.  VIII.  OLD  COVENANT.  223 


prophets  of  Jehovah.  The  national  sin  was  not  denial 
that  Jehovah  is  Israel's  God,  with  a  paramount  claim  to 
the  service  and  worship  of  the  nation.  On  the  contrary, 
the  prophets  represent  their  contemporaries  as  full  of 
zeal  for  Jehovah,  and  confident  that  they  have  secured 
His  help  by  their  great  assiduity  in  His  service  (Amos 
iv.  4  st^.,  V.  18  s^. ;  Hosea  vi. ;  Isa.  i.  11  seq^.\  Micah 
iii.  11 ;  Jer.  vii.). 

To  obtain  a  precise  conception  of  what  this  means, 
we  must  look  more  closely  at  the  notion  of  worship 
under  the  Old  Testament  dispensation.  To  us  worship 
is  a  spiritual  thing.  We  lift  up  our  hearts  and  voices 
to  God  in  the  closet,  the  family,  or  the  church,  per- 
suaded that  God,  who  is  spirit,  will  receive  in  every 
place  the  worship  of  spirit  and  truth.  But  this  is 
strictly  a  New  Testament  conception,  announced  as  a 
new  thing  by  Jesus  to  the  Samaritan  woman,  who  raised 
a  question  as  to  the  disputed  prerogative  of  Zion  or 
Gerizim  as  the  place  of  acceptable  worship.  Under 
the  New  Covenant  neither  Zion  nor  Gerizim  is  the 
mount  of  God.  Under  the  Old  Testament  it  was  other- 
wise. Access  to  God — even  to  the  spiritual  God — was 
limited  by  local  conditions.  There  is  no  worship  with- 
out access  to  the  deity  before  whom  the  worshipper 
draws  nigh  to  express  his  homage.  We  can  draw  near 
to  God  in  every  act  of  prayer  in  the  heavenly  sanctuary, 
through  the  new  and  living  way  which  Jesus  has  con- 
secrated in  His  blood.  But  the  Old  Testament  wor- 
shipper sought  access  to  God  in  an  earthly  sanctuary 


224  THE  POPULAR  lect.  viii. 

which  was  for  him,  as  it  were,  the  meeting  place  of 
heaven  and  earth.  Such  holy  points  of  contact  with  the 
divine  presence  were  locally  fixed,  and  their  mark  was 
the  altar,  where  the  worshipper  presented  his  homage, 
not  in  purely  spiritual  utterance,  but  in  the  material 
form  of  an  altar-gift.  The  promise  of  blessing,  or,  as  we 
should  now  call  it,  of  answer  to  prayer,  is  in  the  Old 
Testament  strictly  attached  to  the  local  sanctuary. 
"  In  every  place  where  I  set  the  memorial  of  my  name, 
I  will  come  unto  thee  and  bless  thee "  (Exod.  xx.  24). 
Every  visible  act  of  worship  is  subjected  to  this  con- 
dition. In  the  mouth  of  Saul,  "  to  make  supplication  to 
Jehovah  "  is  a  synonym  for  doing  sacrifice  (1  Sam.  xiii. 
12).  To  David,  banishment  from  the  land  of  Israel  and 
its  sanctuaries  is  a  command  to  serve  other  gods  (1  Sam. 
xxvi.  19;  compare  Deut.  xxviii.  36,  64).  And  the 
worship  of  the  sanctuary  imperatively  demands  the 
tokens  of  material  homage,  the  gift  without  which  no 
Oriental  would  approach  even  an  earthly  court.  "  None 
shall  appear  before  me  empty "  (Exod.  xxiii.  15). 
Prayer  without  approach  to  the  sanctuary  is  not  recog- 
nised as  part  of  the  "service  of  Jehovah;"  and  for  him 
who  is  at  a  distance  from  the  holy  place,  a  vow,  such  as 
Absalom  made  at  Geshur  in  Syria  (2  Sam.  xv.  8),  is  the 
natural  surrogate  for  the  interrupted  service  of  the 
altar.  The  essence  of  a  vow  is  a  promise  to  do  sacrifice 
or  other  offering  at  the  sanctuary  (Deut.  xii.  6;  Lev. 
xxvii. ;  1  Sam.  i.  21.  Compare  Gen.  xxviii.  20  seq^). 
This  conception  of  the  nature  of  divine  worship  is 


LECT.  VIII.  WORSHIP,  225 

the  basis  alike  of  the  Pentateuchal  law  and  of  the 
popular  religion  of  Israel  described  in  the  historical 
books  and  condemned  by  the  prophets.  The  sanctuary 
of  Jehovah,  the  altar  and  the  altar-gifts,  the  sacrifices 
and  the  solemn  feasts,  the  tithes  and  the  free-will 
offerings,  were  never  treated  with  indifference  (Amos 
iv.  4,  viii.  5;  Hosea  viii.  13;  Isa.  i.  11  scq^.\  Jer.  vii.). 
On  the  contrary,  the  charge  which  the  prophets  con- 
stantly hurl  against  the  people  is  that  they  are  wholly 
absorbed  in  affairs  of  worship  and  ritual  service,  and 
think  themselves  to  have  secured  Jehovah's  favour  by 
the  zeal  of  their  external  devotion  without  the  practice 
of  justice,  mercy,  and  moral  obedience. 

The  condition  of  religious  affairs  in  Northern  Israel 
is  clearly  described  by  the  prophets  Amos  and  Hosea. 
These  prophets  arose  under  the  dynasty  of  Jehu,  the 
ally  of  Elisha  and  the  destroyer  of  Baal-worship,  a 
dynasty  in  which  the  very  names  of  Ihe  kings  denote 
devotion  to  the  service  of  Jehovah.  Jehovah  was  wor- 
shipped in  many  sanctuaries  and  in  forms  full  of  irregu- 
larity from  the  standpoint  of  the  Pentateuch.  There 
were  images  of  Jehovah  under  the  form  of  a  calf  or 
steer  in  Bethel  and  Dan,  and  probably  elsewhere.  The 
order  of  the  local  sanctuaries,  and  the  religious  feasts 
celebrated  at  them,  had  much  in  common  with  the 
idolatry  of  the  Canaanites.  Indeed  many  of  the  high 
places  were  old  Canaanite  sanctuaries.  Nevertheless 
these  sanctuaries  and  their  worship  were  viewed  as  the 
fixed   and   normal   provision   for   the   maintenance   of 


226  THE  POPULAR  lect.  viii 

living:  relations  between  Israel  and  Jehovah.  Hosea 
predicts  a  time  of  judgment  when  this  service  shall  be 
suppressed.  "  The  children  of  Israel  shaU  sit  many  days 
■^  without  sacrifice  and  without  maggeba,  without  ephod 
•  and  teraphim."  This  language  expresses  the  entire  de- 
struction of  the  religious  order  of  the  nation,  a  period  of 
isolation  from  all  access  to  Jehovah,  like  the  isolation  of 
a  faithless  spouse  whom  her  husband  keeps  shut  up,  not 
admitting  her  to  the  privileges  of  marriage  (Hos.  iii.)/^^ 
It  appears,  then,  that  sacrifice  and  maggeba,  ephod  and 
teraphim,  were  recognised  as  the  necessary  forms  and 
instruments  of  the  worship  of  Jehovah.  They  were 
all  old  traditional  forms,  not  the  invention  of  modern 
will-worship.  The  maggeba ,  or  consecrated  stone,  so 
often  named  in  the  Old  Testament  where  our  version 
unfortunately  renders  "  image,"  is  as  old  as  the  time  of 
Jacob,  who  set  up  and  consecrated  the  memorial  stone 
that  marked  Bethel  as  a  sanctuary.  It  was  the  neces- 
sary mark  of  every  high  place,  Canaanite  as  well  as 
Hebrew,  and  is  condemned  in  the  Pentateuchal  laws 
against  the  high  places  along  with  the  associated 
symbol  of  the  sacred  tree  or  pole  (Ashera,  E.  V.  grove), 
which  was  also  a  feature  in  the  patriarchal  sanctuaries. 
(The  oak  of  Moreh,  Gen.  xii.  6,  7;  the  tamarisk  of 
Beersheba,  Gen.  xxi.  33  ;  Gen.  xxxi.  45,  54 ;  Gen.  xxxiii. 
20,  with  XXXV.  4 ;  Jos.  xxiv.  26  ;  Hos.  iv.  13.)  The  ephod 
is  also  ancient.  It  must  have  been  something  very 
different  from  the  ephod  of  the  high  priest,  but  is  to  be 
compared  with  the  ephods  of  Gideon  and  Micah  (Jud. 


LECT.  VIII.  WORSHIP.  227 

viii.  2*7,  xvii.  5),  and  with  that  in  the  sanctuary  of  Nob 
(1  Sam.  xxi.  9).  Finally,  teraphim  are  a  means  of 
divination  (Ezek.  xxi.  21 ;  Zech.  x.  2)  as  old  as  the  time 
of  Jacob,  and  were  found  in  Micah's  sanctuary  and 
David's  house  (1  Sam.  xix.  13 ;  E.  V.  image)}'^^ 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  national  worship  of 
Jehovah,  under  the  dynasty  of  Jehu,  was  conducted 
under  traditional  forms  which  had  a  fixed  character 
and  general  recognition.  These  forms  were  ancient. 
There  is  no  reason  to  think  that  the  worsliip  of  the 
northern  sanctuaries  had  undergone  serious  modifica- 
tions since  the  days  of  the  Judges.  The  sanctuaries 
themselves  were  of  ancient  and,  in  great  part,  of  patri- 
archal consecration.  Beersheba,  Gilgal,  Bethel,  Shechem, 
Mizpah,  were  places  of.  the  most  venerable  sanctity, 
acknowledged  by  Samuel  and  earKer  worthies.  Of  the 
sanctuary  at  Dan  we  know  the  whole  origin  and  history. 
It  was  founded  by  the  Danites  who  carried  off  Micah's 
Levite  and  holy  things ;  and  the  family  of  the  Levite, 
who  was  himself  a  grandson  of  Moses,  continued  in 
office  through  the  age  of  David  and  Samuel  down  to 
the  Captivity  (Jud.  xviii.  30).  It  was  a  sanctuary  of 
purely  Israelite  origin,  originally  instituted  by  Micah 
for  the  service  of  Jehovah,  and  equipped  with  every 
regard  to  the  provision  of  an  acceptable  service.  "  Now 
I  know,"  said  Micah,  "that  Jehovah  will  do  me  good,  since 
I  have  got  the  Levite  as  my  priest."  This  trait  indi- 
cates an  interest  in  correct  ritual  which  never  died  out. 
In  truth  ritual  is  never  deemed  unimportant  in  a  re- 


223  DEFECTS  OF  THE  lect.  viii. 


ligion  so  little  spiritual  as  that  of  the  mass  of  Israel. 
All  worships  that  contain  heathenish  elements  are 
traditional,  and  nothing  is  more  foreign  to  them  than 
the  arhitrary  introduction  of  forms  for  which  there  is 
no  precedent  of  usage. 

That  this  traditional  service  and  ritual  was  not 
Le\dtically  correct  needs  no  proof.  Let  us  rather  con- 
sider the  features  which  marked  it  as  unspiritual  and 
led  the  prophets  to  condemn  it  as  displeasing  to  God. 

In  the  first  place,  we  observe  that  though  Jehovah 
was  worshipped  with  assiduity,  and  worshipped  as  the 
national  God  of  Israel,  there  was  no  clear  conception  of 
the  fundamental  difference  between  Him  and  the  gods  of 
the  nations.  This  appears  particularly  in  the  current 
use  of  images,  like  the  golden  calves,  which  were  sup- 
posed to  be  representations  or  symbols  of  Jehovah.  It 
is  not  easy  to  say  how  far  image- worship  was  essential 
to  the  popular  religion.  Amos,  in  his  preaching  at 
Bethel,  makes  no  mention  of  the  golden  calves,  though 
he  speaks  of  images  of  the  star  gods,  Moloch  and  Chiun 
(Keiwan  or  Saturn).  But  the  whole  service  is  repre- 
sented by  the  prophets  as  gross,  sensual,  and  unworthy 
of  a  spiritual  deity  (Amos  ii.  7,  8 ;  Hosea  iv.  13,  14). 
We  know  that  many  features  in  the  worship  of  the 
high  places  were  practically  identical  with  the  abomi- 
nations of  the  Canaanites,  and  gave  no  expression  to  the 
difference  between  Jehovah  and  the  false  gods.  Thus 
it  came  about  that  the  Israelites  fell  into  what  is  called 
symretism  in  religion.     They  were  unable  sharply  to 


LECT.  VIII.  POPULAR  WORSHIP.  229 

distinguish  between  the  local  worship  of  Jehovah  and 
the  worship  of  the  Canaanite  Baalim.  The  god  of  the 
local  sanctuary  was  adored  as  Jehovah,  but  a  local 
Jehovah  was  practically  a  local  Baal.  This  confusion 
of  thought  may  be  best  illustrated  from  the  local 
Madonnas  of  Eoman  Catholic  shrines.  Every  Madonna 
is  a  representation  of  the  one  Virgin;  but  practically 
each  Virgin  has  its  own  merits  and  its  own  devotees,  so 
that  the  service  of  these  shrines  is  almost  indistinsfuish- 
able  from  polytheism,  of  which,  indeed,  it  is  often  an 
historical  continuation.  In  Phoenicia  one  still  sees 
grottoes  of  the  Virgin  Mary  which  are  old  shrines  of 
Ashtoreth,  bearing  the  symbols  of  the  ancient  worship 
of  Canaan.  So  it  was  in  those  days.  The  worship  of 
the  one  Jehovah,  who  was  Himself  addressed  in  old 
times  by  the  title  of  Baal  or  Lord  {sfiiiwa,  p.  79),  practi- 
cally fell  into  a  worship  of  a  multitude  of  local  Baalim, 
so  that  a  prophet  like  Hosea  can  say  that  the  Israelites, 
though  still  imagining  themselves  to  be  serving  the 
national  God,  and  acknowledging  His  benefits,  have 
reaUy  turned  from  Him  to  deities  that  are  no  gods. 

In  this  way  another  fault  came  in.  The  people,  whose 
worship  of  Jehovah  was  hardly  to  be  distinguished  from 
a  gross  polytheism,  could  not  be  averse  to  worship  other 
gods  side  by  side  with  the  national  deity.  Thus  we  find 
that  the  services  of  Ashtoreth,  Tammuz,  or  other  deities 
which  could  not  even  in  popular  conception  be  identi- 
fied with  Jehovah,  obtained  a  certain  currency,  at  least 
in  sections  of  the  nation.  This  worship  was  always 
11 


230  POPULAR  WORSHIP  lect.  viii. 

secondary,  and  was  put  down  from  time  to  time  in 
movements  of  reformation  which  left  the  high  places  of 
Jehovah  untouched  (1  Sam.  vii.  3;  1  Kings  xv.  12  se^.\ 
2  Kings  X.  28,  29,  xi.  18). 

This  sketch  of  the  popular  religion  of  Israel  is 
mainly  drawn  from  the  Northern  Kingdom.  But  it  is 
clear  from  the  facts  enumerated  that  it  was  not  a  mere 
innovation  due  to  the  schism  of  Jeroboam.  Jeroboam, 
no  doubt,  lent  a  certain  Mat  to  the  service  of  the  royal 
sanctuaries,  and  the  golden  calves  gave  a  very  different 
conception  of  Jehovah  from  that  which  was  symbolised 
by  the  ark  on  Zion.  But  the  elements  of  the  whole 
worship  were  traditional,  and  were  already  current  in 
the  age  of  the  Judges.  Gideon's  golden  ephod  and  the 
graven  image  at  Dan  prove  that  even  image-worship 
was  no  innovation  of  Jeroboam.  And  it  is  certain  that 
the  worship  of  the  Judsean  sanctuaries  was  not  essen- 
tially different  from  that  of  the  northern  shrines.  The 
high  places  flourished  undisturbed  from  generation  to 
generation.  The  land  was  full  of  idols  (Isa.  ii.). 
Jerusalem  appears  to  Micah  as  the  centre  of  a  corrupt 
Judsean  worship,  which  he  parallels  with  the  corrupt 
worship  of  Samaria  (Micah  i.  5,  iii.  12,  v.  11  se^., 
vi.  16). 

Where  then  did  this  traditional  worship,  so  largely 
diffused  through  the  mass  of  Israel,  have  its  origin,  and 
what  is  its  historical  relation  to  the  laws  of  the  Penta- 
teuch ?  No  doubt  many  of  its  corrupt  features  may  be 
explained  by  the  influence  of  the  Canaanites ;  and  from 


LECT.  VIII.  IN  JUDAH.  2-31 

the  absolute  standard  of  spiritual  religion  applied  by 
the  prophets  it  might  even  be  said  that  Israel  had  for- 
saken Jehovah  for  the  Baalim.  But  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  worshippers  it  was  not  so.  They  still 
believed  themselves  loyal  to  Jehovah.  Their  great 
sanctuaries  were  patriarchal  holy  places  like  Bethel  and 
Beersheba,  or  purely  Hebrew  foundations  like  Dan. 
With  all  its  corruptions,  their  worship  had  a  specifically 
national  character.  Jehovah  never  was  a  Canaanite 
God,  and  the  roots  of  the  popular  religion,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  were  that  acknowledgment  of  Jehovah  as 
Israel's  God,  and  of  the  duty  of  national  service  to 
Him,  which  is  equally  the  basis  of  Mosaic  orthodoxy. ^^^ 
These  are  principles  which  lie  behind  the  first  beginnings 
of  Canaanite  influence.  But  in  the  Pentateuch  these 
principles  are  embodied  in  a  ritual  altogether  diverse 
in  system  and  theory,  as  well  as  in  detail,  from  the  tradi- 
tional ritual  of  the  high  places.  The  latter  service  is  not 
merely  a  corrupt  copy  of  the  Mosaic  system,  with  ele- 
ments borrowed  from  the  Canaan  ites.  In  the  Levi- 
tical  ritual  the  essentials  of  Jehovah-worship  are  put 
in  a  form  which  made  no  accommodation  to  heathenism 
possible,  which  left  no  middle  ground  between  the  pure 
worship  of  Jehovah,  as  maintained  by  the  Aaronic 
priesthood  in  the  one  sanctuary,  and  a  deliberate  rejec- 
tion of  Israel's  God  for  the  idols  of  the  heathen. 

To  understand  this  point  we  must  observe  that 
according  to  the  Levitical  system  God  is  absolutely 
inaccessible   to   man,  except  in  the  priestly  ritual  of 


232  THE  ONE  TRUE  lect.  viii. 

the  central  sanctuary.      Controversial  writers  on   the 
law  of  the  one  sanctuary  have  often  been  led  to  over- 
look this  point  by  confining  their  attention  to  the  law 
of  the  sanctuary  in  Deuteronomy,  wliich  speaks  of  the 
choice  of  one  place  in  Canaan  where  Jehovah  will  set 
His  name  as  a  practical  safeguard  against  participation 
in  the  worship  of  Canaanite  high  places.     But  if  the 
whole  Pentateuch  is  one  Mosaic  system,  the  law  of 
Deuteronomy  must  be  viewed  in  the  light  of  the  legis- 
lation of  the  Middle  Books.    Here  the  theory  of  the  one 
sanctuary  is  worked  out  on  a  basis  independent  of  the 
question   of  heathen   shrines.     According  to  the  Old 
Testament,  worship  is  a  tryst  between  man  and  God  in 
the  sanctuary,  and  the  question  of  the  legitimate  sanc- 
tuary is  the  question  of  the  place  where  Jehovah  has 
promised  to  hold  tryst  with  His  people,  and  the  condi- 
tions  which   He   lays   down   for   this   meeting.      The 
fundamental  promise   of  the    Levitical   legislation   is 
Exod.  xxix.  42  ug.     The  place  of  tryst  is  the  Tent  of 
Tryst  or  Meeting,  incorrectly  rendered  in  the  Authorised 
Version,  "  The  tabernacle  of  the  congregation."     "  There 
will  I  hold  tryst  with  the  children  of  Israel,  and  it  shall 
be  sanctified  by  my  glory.     And  I  will  sanctify  the 
tent  of  meeting  and  the  altar,  and  I  will  sanctify  Aaron 
and  his  sons  to  do  priestly  service  to  me.     And  I  will 
dwell  in  the  midst  of  the  children  of  Israel,  and  will  be 
their  God."     The  tent  of  meeting  is  God's  mishhan,  His 
dwelling-place,  which  He  sets  in  the  midst  of  Israel 
(Lev.  xxvi.  11).     The  first  condition  of  divine  blessing 


LECT.  VIII.  SANCTUARY,  233 

in  Lev.  xxvi.  is  reverence  for  the  sabbath  and  the 
sanctuary,  and  the  total  rejection  of  idols  and  of  the 
maggeba  which  was  the  mark  of  the  high  places./  There 
is  no  local  point  of  contact  between  heaven  and  earth, 
no  place  where  man  can  find  a  present  God  to  receive 
his  worship,  save  this  one  tent  of  meeting,  where  the  ark 
with  the  Cherubim  is  the  abiding  symbol  that  God  is  in 
the  midst  of  Israel,  and  the  altar  stands  at  the  door  of 
the  tabernacle  as  the  legitimate  place  of  Israel's  gifts. 
This  sanctuary  with  its  altar  is  the  centre  of  Israel's 
holiness.  It  is  so  holy  that  it  is  hedged  round  by  a 
double  cordon  of  sacred  ministers.  For  the  presence  of 
Jehovah  is  a  terrible  thing,  destructive  to  sinful  man. 
The  Old  Testament  symbol  of  Jehovah's  manifestation 
to  His  people  is  the  lightning  flash  from  behind  the 
thunder  cloud,  fire  involved  in  smoke,  an  awful  and 
devouring  brightness  consuming  all  that  is  not  holy. 
Therefore  the  dreadful  spot  where  His  holiness  dwells 
may  never  be  approached  without  atoning  ritual  and 
strict  precautions  of  ceremonial  sanctity  provided  for 
the  priests,  and  for  none  other.  Even  the  Levites  may 
not  touch  either  ark  or  altar,  lest  both  they  and  the 
priests  die  (Num.  xviii.  3).  StiU  less  dare  the  laity  draw 
near  to  the  tabernacle  (Num.  xvii.  13  [28]).  It  is  only 
the  sons  of  Aaron  who,  by  their  special  consecration, 
can  bear  with  impunity  "  the  guilt  of  the  sanctuary  " 
(xviii.  1) ;  and  so  every  sacred  offering  of  the  Israelite, 
every  gift  which  expresses  the  people's  homage,  must 
pass  through  their  hand  and  do  toll  to  them  (Num.  xviii. 


234  THE  POPULAR  lect.  viii. 

8  seq^.  Thus  the  access  of  the  ordinary  Israelite  to 
God  is  very  restricted.  He  can  only  stand  afar  off 
while  the  priest  approaches  Jehovah  as  his  mediator, 
and  brings  back  a  word  of  blessing.  And  even  this 
mediate  access  to  God  is  confined  to  his  visits  to  the 
central  sanctuary.  The  stated  intercourse  of  God  with 
His  people  is  not  the  concern  of  the  whole  people,  but 
of  the  priests,  who  are  constantly  before  God,  offering 
up  on  behalf  of  the  nation  the  unbroken  service  of  the 
continual  daily  oblations.  This  is  a  great  limitation  of 
the  freedom  of  worship.  But  it  is  no  arbitrary  restric- 
tion. On  the  Levitical  theory,  the  imperfection  of  the 
ordinary  holiness  of  Israel  leaves  no  alternative  open. 
For  the  holiness  of  God  is  fatal  to  him  who  dares  to 
come  near  His  dwelling-place. 

On  this  theory  the  ritual  of  the  sanctuary  is  no  arti- 
ficial scheme  devised  to  glorify  one  holy  place  above 
others,  but  the  necessary  scheme  of  precaution  for  every 
local  approach  to  God.  Other  sanctuaries  are  not  simply 
less  holy,  places  of  less  solemn  tryst  with  Jehovah ;  they 
are  places  where  His  holiness  is  not  revealed,  and  there- 
fore are  not,  and  cannot  be,  sanctuaries  of  Jehovah  at 
all.  If .  Jehovah  were  to  meet  with  man  in  a  second 
sanctuary,  the  same  consequences  of  inviolable  holiness 
would  assert  themselves,  and  the  new  holy  place  would 
again  require  to  be  fenced  in  with  equal  ritual  precau- 
tions. In  the  very  nature  of  the  covenant,  there  is  but 
one  altar  and  one  priesthood  through  which  the  God  of 
Israel  can  be  approached. 


LECT.  VIII.  SANCTUARIES,  235 

The  popular  religion  of  Israel,  with  its  many  sanc- 
tuaries, proceeds  on  a  theory  diametrically  opposite. 
Opportunity  ^of  access  to  Jehovah  is  near  to  every 
Israelite,  and  every  occasion  of  life  that  calls  on  the 
individual,  the  clan,  or  the  village,  to  look  Godwards  is 
a  summons  to  the  altar.  In  the  family  every  feast  was 
an  eucharistic  sacrifice.  In  affairs  of  public  life  it  was 
not  otherwise.  The  very  phrases  in  Hebrew  for  "  making 
a  covenant  "  or  "  inaugurating  war  "  point  to  the  sacri- 
ficial observances  that  accompanied  such  acts.  The 
earlier  history  relates  scarcely  one  event  of  importance 
that  was  not  transacted  at  a  holy  place.  The  local 
sanctuaries  were  the  centres  of  all  Hebrew  life.  How 
little  of  the  history  would  remain  if  Shechem  and  Bethel, 
the  two  Mizpahs  and  Ophra,  Gilgal,  Eamah,  and  Gibeon, 
Hebron,  Bethlehem,  and  Beersheba,  Kadesh  and  Maha- 
naim,  Tabor  and  Carmel,  were  blotted  out  of  the  pages 
of  the  Old  Testament  !^^^ 

This  different  and  freer  conception  of  the  means  of 
access  to  God,  the  desire  which  it  embodies  to  realise 
Jehovah's  presence  in  acts  of  worship,  not  at  rare  inter- 
vals only  but  in  every  concern  of  life,  cannot  be  viewed 
as  a  mere  heathenish  corruption  of  the  Levitical  system. 
This  fact  comes  out  most  clearly  in  the  point  whicli 
brings  out  the  contrast  of  the  two  systems  in  its  com- 
pletest  form. 

In  the  traditional  popular  Jehovah-worship,  to  slay 
an  ox  or  a  sheep  for  food  was  a  sacrificial  act,  and  the 
flesh  of  the  victim  was  not  lawful  food  unless  the  blood 


236  ALL  FEASTS  ARE  lect.  viii. 

or  life  had  been  poured  out  before  Jehovah.  The  cur- 
rency of  this  view  is  presupposed  in  the  Pentateuchal 
legislation.  Thus  in  Lev.  xvii.  it  appears  ^s  a  perpetual 
statute  that  no  animal  can  be  lawfully  slain  for  food, 
unless  it  be  presented  as  a  peace-offering  before  the 
central  sanctuary,  and  its  blood  sprinkled  on  the  altar. 
One  has  no  right  to  slay  an  animal  on  other  conditions. 
The  life,  which  lies  in  the  blood,  comes  from  God  and 
belongs  to  Him.  The  man  who  does  not  recognise  this 
fact,  but  eats  the  flesh  with  the  blood,  "hath  shed 
blood,  and  shall  be  cut  off  from  liis  people  "  (verse  4 ; 
comp.  Gen.  ix.  4).  In  Deuteronomy  this  principle  is 
presupposed,  but  relaxed  by  a  formal  statute.  Those 
who  do  not  live  beside  the  sanctuary  may  eat  flesh  with- 
out a  sacrificial  act,  if  they  simply  pour  out  the  blood 
upon  the  ground  (Deut.  xii.  20  seq).  The  old  rule,  it 
would  seem,  might  still  hold  good  for  every  animal  slain 
within  reach  of  the  holy  place.  Now,  under  the  condi- 
•  tions  of  Eastern  life,  beef  and  mutton  are  not  everyday 
food.  In  Canaan,  as  among  the  Arabs  at  this  day,  milk 
is  the  usual  diet  (Prov.  xxvii.  26,  27 ;  Jud.  iv.  19).  The 
slaughter  of  a  victim  for  food  marks  a  festal  occasion, 
and  the  old  Hebrew  principle  modified  in  Deuteronomy 
means  that  all  feasts  are  religious,  that  sacred  occasions 
and  occasions  of  natural  joy  and  festivity  are  identical.  ^^^ 
Under  the  full  Levitical  system  this  principle  was  obso- 
lete, or  at  least  could  assert  itself  only  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  sanctuary,  and  in  connection  with  the  three  great 
festive  gatherings  at  Passover,  Pentecost,  and  the  Feast 


i.ECT.  VIII.  SACRIFICIAL.  237 

of  Tabernacles.  But  in  the  actual  history  of  the  nation 
the  principle  was  not  yet  obsolete.  Thus  in  1  Sam. 
xiv.,  when  the  people,  in  their  fierce  hunger  after  the 
battle  of  Michmash,  fly  on  the  spoil  and,  slaying  beasts 
on  the  ground,  eat  them  with  the  blood — i.e.,  as  we  see 
from  Lev.  xvii.,  without  offering  the  blood  to  Jehovah — 
Saul  rebukes  their  transgression,  erects  a  rude  altar  in 
the  form  of  a  great  stone,  and  orders  the  people  to  kill 
their  victims  there.  A  feast  and  a  sacrifice  are  still 
identical  in  the  book  of  Proverbs,  which  speaks  the 
ordinary  language  of  the  people.  Compare  Prov.  xv. 
17  with  xvii.  1,  and  note  the  inducement  offered  to  the 
foolish  young  man  in  chap.  vii.  14.  In  Hosea  ii.  11  all 
mirth  is  represented  as  connected  with  religious  cere- 
monies. But  the  most  conclusive  passage  is  Hosea  ix. 
3  seq.,  where  the  prophet  predicts  that  in  the  Exile  all 
the  food  of  the  people  shall  be  unclean,  because  sacrifice 
cannot  be  performed  beyond  the  land  of  Israel.  They 
shall  eat,  as  it  were,  the  unclean  bread  of  mourners, 
"  because  their  necessary  food  shall  not  be  presented  in 
the  house  of  Jehovah."  In  other  words,  all  animal  food 
not  presented  at  the  altar  is  unclean ;  the  whole  life  of 
the  people  becomes  unclean  when  they  leave  the  land 
of  Jehovah  to  dwell  in  an  "  unclean  land  "  (Amos  vii. 
1*7).  We  see  from  this  usage  how  closely  the  practice 
of  sacrifice  in  every  corner  of  the  land  was  interw'oven 
with  the  whole  life  of  the  nation,  and  how  absolute 
was  the  contrast  between  the  traditional  conception  of 
sacrificial  intercourse  between  Jehovah  and  His  people 


238  THE  PSALMS  AND  lect.  viii. 

and  that  whicli  is  expressed  in  the  Levitical  law. 
But  we  see  also  that  the  popular  conception  is  not  a 
new  thing  superadded  to  the  Levitical  system  from  a 
foreign  source,  but  an  old  traditional  principle  of  Jeho- 
vah-worship prior  to  the  law  of  Deuteronomy.  When 
did  this  principle  take  root  in  the  nation  ?  Not  surely 
in  the  forty  years  of  wandering,  when,  according  to  the 
express  testimony  of  Amos  v.  25,  sacrifices  and  offerings 
were  not  presented  to  Jehovah. 

But  let  this  pass  in  the  meantime.  We  are  not  now 
concerned  to  trace  the  history  of  the  ordinances  of  wor- 
ship in  Israel,  but  only  to  establish  a  clear  conception 
of  the  essential  difference  between  the  old  popular  wor- 
ship and  the  finished  Levitical  system.  The  very  found- 
ation of  revealed  religion  is  the  truth  that  man  does  not 
fii-st  seek  and  find  God,  but  that  God  in  His  gTacious 
condescension  seeks  out  man,  and  gives  him  such  an 
approach  to  Himself  as  man  could  not  enjoy  without 
the  antecedent  act  of  divine  self-communication.  The 
characteristic  mark  of  each  dispensation  of  revealed 
religion  lies  in  the  provision  which  it  makes  for  the 
acceptable  approach  of  the  worshipper  to  his  God. 
Under  the  Levitical  dispensation  all  approach  to  God  is 
limited  to  the  central  sanctuary,  and  passes  of  necessity 
through  the  channel  of  the  priestly  mediation  of  the 
sons  of  Aaron.  The  worshipping  subject  is,  strictly 
speaking,  the  nation  of  Israel  as  a  unity,  and  the  func- 
tion of  worship  is  discharged  on  behalf  of  the  nation  by 
the  priests  of  God's  choice.     The  religion  of  the  indivi- 


LECT.  VIII.  THE  SANCTUARY.  239 

dual  rests  on  this  basis.  It  is  only  the  maintenance  of 
the  representative  national  service  of  the  sanctuary 
which  gives  to  every  Israelite  the  assurance  that  he 
stands  under  the  protection  of  the  national  covenant 
with  Jehovah,  and  enables  him  to  enjoy  a  measure  of 
such  personal  spiritual  fellowship  with  God  as  can 
never  be  lacking  in  true  religion.  But  the  faith  with 
w^hich  the  Israelite  rested  on  God's  redeeming  love  had 
little  direct  opportunity  to  express  itself  in  visible  acts 
of  homage.  The  sanctuary  was  seldom  accessible,  and 
in  daily  life  the  Hebrew  believer  could  only  follow  with 
an  inward  longing  and  spiritual  sympathy  the  national 
homage  which  continually  ascended  on  behalf  of  him- 
self and  aU  the  people  of  God  in  the  stated  ritual  of  the 
Temple.  Hence  that  eager  thirst  for  participation  in 
the  services  of  the  sanctuary  which  is  expressed  in 
Psalms  like  the  forty-second :  "  My  soul  thirsteth  for  God 
the  Living  God ;  when  shall  I  come  and  appear  before 
the  face  of  God?"  "Send  forth  thy  light  and  thy 
truth ;  let  them  guide  me ;  let  them  bring  me  to  thy 
holy  mountain,  even  unto  thy  dwelling-place."  This 
thirst,  seldom  satiated,  which  fills  the  Psalter  with 
expressions  of  passionate  fervour  in  describing  the  joys 
of  access  to  God's  house,  was  an  inseparable  feature  of 
the  Levitical  system.  After  the  Exile,  the  necessity  for 
more  frequent  acts  of  overt  religion  was  partly  supplied 
by  the  synagogues ;  but  these,  in  so  far  as  they  provided 
a  sort  of  worship  without  sacrifice,  were  already  an  indi- 
cation that  the  dispensation  was  inadequate  and  must 


240  CONCLUSION.  lect.  viii. 

pass  away.  All  these  experiences  are  in  the  strongest 
contrast  to  the  popular  religious  life  before  the  Captivity. 
Then  the  people  found  Jehovah,  and  rejoiced  before  Him, 
in  every  corner  of  the  land,  and  on  every  occasion  of 
Hfe. 

This  contrast  within  the  Old  Testament  dispensa- 
tion presents  no  difficulty  if  we  can  affirm  that  the 
popular  religion  was  altogether  false,  that  it  gave  no 
true  access  to  Jehovah,  and  must  be  set  on  one  side  in 
describing  the  genuine  religious  life  of  Israel.  But  it  is 
a  very  different  thing  if  we  find  that  the  true  believers 
of  ancient  Israel — prophets  like  Samuel,  righteous  men 
like  David — placed  themselves  on  the  standpoint  of  the 
local  sanctuaries,  and  framed  their  own  lives  on  the 
assumption  that  God  is  indeed  to  be  found  in  service 
non-Levitical.  If  the  whole  Pentateuchal  system  is 
really  as  old  as  Moses,  the  popular  worship  has  none  of 
the  marks  of  a  religion  of  revelation  ;  it  sought  access  to 
God  in  services  to  which  He  had  attached  no  promise. 
And  yet  we  shall  find,  in  next  Lecture,  that  for  long 
centuries  after  Moses,  all  the  true  religion  of  Israel 
moved  in  forms  which  departed  from  the  first  axioms 
of  Levitical  service,  and  rested  on  the  belief  that  Jehovah 
may  be  acceptably  worshipped  under  the  popular  sys- 
tem, if  only  the  corruptions  of  that  system  are  guarded 
against.  It  was  not  on  the  basis  of  the  Pentateuchal 
theory  of  worship  that  God's  grace  ruled  in  Israel  during 
the  age  of  the  Judges  and  the  Kings,  and  it  was  not  on 
that  basis  that  the  prophets  taught. 


LECT.  IX.  RETROSPECT.  241 


LECTUEE   IX. 

THE  LAW  AND  THE  HISTORY  OF  ISRAEL  BEFOKE 
THE  EXILE. 

In  last  Lecture  I  tried  to  exhibit  to  you  the  outlines  of 
the  popular  worship  of  the  mass  of  Israel  in  the  period  be- 
fore the  Captivity,  as  sketched  in  the  books  of  Kings  and 
in  the  contemporary  prophets.  In  drawing  this  sketch 
I  directed  your  attention  particularly  to  two  points.  On 
the  one  hand,  the  popular  religion  has  a  basis  in  common 
with  the  Pentateuchal  system :  both  alike  acknowledge 
Jehovah  as  the  God  of  Israel,  who  brought  His  people 
out  of  the  land  of  Egypt ;  both  recognise  that  Israel's 
homage  and  worship  are  due  to  Jehovah,  and  that  the 
felicity  of  the  people  in  the  land  of  Canaan  is  de- 
pendent on  His  favour.  But  along  with  this  we  found 
that  between  the  popular  worship  and  the  system  of  the 
Pentateuch  there  is  a  remarkable  contrast.  In  the 
Levitical  system  access  to  God  is  only  to  be  attained 
through  the  mediation  of  the  Aaronic  priests  at  the 
central  sanctuary.  The  whole  worship  of  Israel  is 
narrowed  to  the  sanctuary  of  the  ark,  and  there  the 
priests  of  God's  consecration  conduct  that  representative 
service  which   is  in   some  sense  the   worship   of  the 


242  THE  LA  W  AND  lect.  ix. 

whole  people.  The  ordinary  Israelite  meets  with  God  in 
the  sanctuary  only  on  special  occasions,  and  during  the 
great  part  of  his  life  must  be  content  to  stand  afar  off, 
following  with  distant  sympathy  that  continual  service 
which  is  going  on  for  him  at  Jerusalem  in  the  hands  of 
the  Temple  priests.  In  the  popular  religion,  on  the 
contrary,  the  need  of  constant  access  to  God  is  present 
to  every  Israelite.  Opportunities  of  worship  exist  in 
every  corner  of  the  land,  and  every  occasion  of  import- 
ance, whether  for  the  life  of  the  individual  or  for  the 
family,  village,  or  clan,  is  celebrated  by  some  sacrificial 
rite  at  the  local  sanctuary.  We  saw,  further,  that,  as 
these  two  types  of  religion  are  separated  by  a  funda- 
mental difference,  so  also  it  is  impossible  to  suppose 
that  the  popular  worship  is  merely  a  corruption  of 
the  Levitical  theory  under  the  influence  of  Canaanite 
idolatry.  It  is  indeed  very  natural  to  suppose  that  the 
system  of  the  Law,  the  distance  that  it  constitutes  be- 
tween Jehovah  and  the  ordinary  worshipper,  was  too 
abstract  for  the  mass  of  Israel.  It  can  well  be  thought 
that  the  mass  of  the  people  in  those  days  could  not  be 
satisfied  with  the  kind  of  representative  worship  con- 
ducted on  their  behalf  in  the  one  sanctuary,  and  that 
they  felt  a  desire  to  come  themselves  into  immediate 
contact  with  the  Deity  in  personal  acts  of  service 
embodied  in  sacrifice.  But  if  the  Levitical  theory  was 
the  starting-point  it  is  pretty  clear  that  this  would 
rather  lead  the  unspiritual  part  of  Israel  to  worship 
other  gods  side  by  side  with  Jehovah,  local  and  inferior 


LECT.  IX.  THE  HISTORY,  243 

deities,  just  as  in  the  Eoman  Catholic  Church  the 
distance  between  God  and  the  ordinary  layman  leads 
the  mass  of  the  people,  who  have  no  boldness  of  access 
to  God  the  Father  or  God  the  Son,  separated  from  them 
in  the  sacred  mystery  of  the  mass,  to  approach  the  saints 
and  address  themselves  to  them  as  more  accessible 
deities.  But  that  is  not  what  we  find  in  Israel.  We 
do  not  find  that  a  sense  of  the  inaccessibility  of 
Jehovah,  as  represented  in  the  system  of  the  Penta- 
teuch, led  Israel  for  the  most  part  to  serve  other 
gods,  although  that  also  happened  in  special  circum- 
stances. They  held  that  Jehovah  Himself  could  be 
approached  and  acceptably  worshipped  at  a  multitude  of 
sanctuaries  not  acknowledged  in  the  system  of  the  Law, 
and  at  which,  according  to  that  system,  God  had  given 
no  promise  whatever  to  meet  with  His  people.  It  can 
hardly  be  questioned  that  the  idea  of  meeting  with 
Jehovah  at  the  local  sanctuaries  and  of  doing  accept- 
able service  to  Him  there  had  survived  from  a  time 
previous  to  the  enactment  of  the  law  of  the  middle 
books  of  the  Pentateuch.  This  is  confirmed  by  the 
fact  that  the  lineaments  of  the  popular  religion  as  dis- 
played in  the  historical  books  have  much  that  is  akin 
to  the  worship  of  the  patriarchs,  and  in  particular  that 
many  of  the  sanctuaries  of  Israel  were  venerated  as 
patriarchal  shrines. 

Nevertheless,  if  Moses  left  the  whole  Levitical 
system  as  a  public  code,  specially  intrusted  to  the 
priests  and  leaders  of  the  nation,  that  code  must  have 


244  yOSIAH'S  LECT.  ix. 

influenced  at  least  the  elite  of  Israel.  Its  provisions 
must  have  been  kept  alive  at  the  central  sanctuary,  and, 
in  particular,  the  revealing  God,  who  does  not  contra- 
dict Himself,  must  have  based  upon  the  law  His  further 
communications  to  the  people,  and  His  judgment  upon 
their  sins  spoken  through  His  prophets.  He  cannot 
have  stamped  with  His  approval  a  popular  system  entirely 
ignoring  the  fundamental  conditions  of  His  intercourse 
with  Israel.  And  the  history  must  bear  traces  of  this. 
God's  word  does  not  return  unto  Him  void  without 
accomplishing  that  which  He  pleaseth,  and  succeeding 
in  the  thing  whereto  He  sends  it  (Isa.  Iv.  11). 

Now  it  is  certain  that  the  first  sustained  and 
thorough  attempt  to  put  down  the  popular  worship, 
and  estabhsh  an  order  of  religion  conformed  to  the 
written  law,  was  under  King  Josiah.  An  essay  in  the 
same  direction  had  been  made  by  Hezekiah  at  the  close 
of  the  eighth  century  B.C.  (1  Kings  xviii.  4,  22).  Of  the 
details  of  Hezekiah's  reformation  we  know  little.  It 
was  followed  by  a  violent  and  bloody  reaction  under 
his  successor  Manasseh,  and  in  Josiah's  time  the  whole 
work  had  to  be  done  again  from  the  beginning.  Heze- 
kiah evidently  acted  in  harmony  with  Isaiah  and  his 
fellow -prophets  ;  but  neither  in  the  history  nor  in 
tlieir  writings  is  anything  said  of  the  written  law  as  the 
rule  and  standard  of  reformation.  In  the  case  of  Josiah 
it  was  otherwise.  The  reformation  in  his  eighteenth 
year  (B.C.  521)  was  based  on  the  Book  of  the  Law  found 
in  the  Temple,  and  was  carried  out  in  pursuance  of  a 


LECT.  IX.  REFORMATION,  245 

solemn  covenant  to  obey  the  law,  made  by  the  king 
and  the  people  in  the  house  of  Jehovah.  This  is  an  act 
strictly  parallel  to  the  later  covenant  and  reformation 
under  Ezra.  But  it  did  not  amount,  like  Ezra's  refor- 
mation, to  a  complete  establishment  of  the  whole  ritual 
system  of  the  Pentateuch.  The  book  of  Nehemiah 
expressly  says  as  much  with  respect  to  the  Feast  of 
Tabernacles.  And  the  same  fact  comes  out  in  regard  to 
the  order  of  the  priestly  ministrations  at  the  Temple. 
For,  while  Josiah  put  to  death  the  priests  of  the  high 
places  of  Ephraim,  he  brought  the  priests  of  tlie  Judoean 
high  places  to  Jerusalem,  where  they  were  not  allowed 
to  minister  at  the  altar,  but  "  ate  unleavened  bread  in 
the  midst  of  their  brethren  "  (2  Kings  xxiii.  8,  9).  The 
reference  here  is  to  the  unleavened  bread  of  the  Temple 
oblations,  which,  on  the  Levitical  law,  was  given  to  the 
sons  of  Aaron,  to  be  eaten  in  the  court  of  the  sanctuary 
(Lev.  vi.  14-18 ;  Xum.  xviii.  9).  It  appears,  then, 
that  the  priests  of  the  local  high  places  were  recognised 
as  brethren  of  the  temple  priests,  and  admitted  to  a 
share  in  the  sacred  dues,  though  not  to  full  altar  privi- 
leges. This  was  unquestionably  a  grave  Levitical 
irregularity,  for,  though  it  appears  from  Ezek.  xliv.  10 
seq^.  that  the  priests  of  the  high  places  were  Levites,  it 
is  not  for  a  moment  to  be  supposed  that  they  were  all 
sons  of  Aaron  (compare  Keh.  vii.  63  seq^j,  Tliis  point 
wiU  come  up  again  along  with  other  indications 
that  the  worship  in  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem  was  not 
established  by  Josiah  in  full  conformity  with  the  Levi- 


246  JOSIAH.  LECT.  IX. 

tical  system.  All  that  I  ask  you  to  carry  with  you  at 
present  is  that  Josiah's  reformation,  although  based 
upon  the  law,  and  explicitly  taking  it  as  the  standard, 
did  not  go  the  whole  length  of  that  Pentateuchal  system 
which  we  now  possess.  In  truth,  when  we  compare 
the  reformation  of  Josiah,  as  set  forth  in  Second  Kings, 
with  what  is  written  in  the  Pentateuch,  we  observe 
that  everything  that  Josiah  acted  upon  is  found  writ- 
ten in  one  or  other  part  of  Deuteronomy.  So  far  as  the 
history  goes,  there  is  no  proof  that  his  '*  Book  of  the 
Covenant "  was  anything  more  than  the  book  of  Deuter- 
onomy, which,  in  its  very  form,  appears  to  have  once 
been  a  separate  volume.  ^^^ 

No  one  can  read  2  Kings  xxii.,  xxiii.  without  observ- 
ing how  entirely  novel  was  the  order  of  things  which 
Josiah  introduced.  Before  the  Book  of  the  Law  was 
read  to  him,  Josiah  was  interested  in  holy  things,  and 
engaged  in  the  work  of  restoring  the  Temple.  But  the 
necessity  for  a  thorough  overturn  of  the  popular  sanctu- 
aries came  on  him  as  a  thing  entirely  new.  It  is  plain, 
too,  that  he  had  to  consider  established  privileges  and 
a  certain  legitimate  status  on  the  part  of  the  priests  of 
the  high  places.  There  was  in  Judaea  a  class  of  irregular 
priests  called  Kemarim,  instituted  by  royal  authority 
(E.  V.  idolatrom  priests,  2  Kings  xxiii.  5),  whom  he 
simply  put  down.  But  the  priests  of  the  popular  high 
places  were  recognised  priests  of  Jehovah,  and,  instead 
of  being  punished  as  apostates,  they  received  support 
and  a  certain  status  in  the  Temple.     We  now  see  the 


LECT.  IX.  y EH  01  AD  A.  247 

full  significance  of  the  toleration  of  the  high  places 
by  the  earlier  kings  of  Judah.  They  were  tolerated 
because  they  were  not  known  to  be  any  breach  of  the 
religious  constitution  of  Israel.  Even  the  Temple  priests 
knew  of  no  such  constitution.  The  high  places  were 
not  interfered  with  by  King  Jehoash  when  his  conduct 
was  entirely  directed  by  the  high  priest  Jehoiada  (2 
Kings  xii.  2,  3).  Yet  Jehoiada  had  every  motive  for 
suppressing  the  local  sanctuaries,  which  diminished  the 
dues  of  the  central  altar,  and  he  could  hardly  have 
failed  to  move  in  this  direction  if  he  had  had  the  law  at 
his  back.  It  seems,  however,  that  the  written  covenant 
of  Jehovah  with  Israel,  preserved  in  the  Temple,  was 
not  yet  identical  with  Josiah's  Book  of  the  Covenant 
(2  Kings  xxiii.  2).  In  the  account  of  the  dedication 
of  the  Temple  (2  Kings  viii.  9,  21),  the  covenant  is 
identified  with  the  two  tables  of  stone  preserved  in 
the  ark. 

These  facts  do  not  mean,  merely,  that  the  law  was 
disobeyed.  They  imply  that  the  complete  system  of 
the  Pentateuch  was  not  known  in  the  period  of  the 
kings  of  Judah,  even  as  the  theoretical  constitution  of 
Israel.  No  one,  even  among  those  most  interested, 
shows  the  least  consciousness  that  the  Temple  and  its 
priesthood  have  an  exclusive  claim  on  aU  the  worship 
of  Israel.  And  the  local  worship,  which  proceeds  on  a 
diametrically  opposite  theory,  is  acknowledged  as  a  part 
of  the  established  ordinances  of  the  land. 

Here,  then,  the  question  rises.  Was  the  founding  of 


248  THE  TEMPLE  lect.  ix. 

the  Temple  on  Zion  undertaken  as  part  of  an  attempt  to 
give  practical  force  to  the  Levitical  system  ?  Was  this, 
at  least,  an  effort  to  displace  the  traditional  religion  and 
establish  the  ordinances  of  the  Pentateuch  ?  The  whole 
life  ot  Solomon  answers  this  question  in  the  negative. 
His  royal  state,  of  which  the  Temple  and  its  service  were 
a  part,  was  never  conformed  to  the  law.  He  not  only 
did  not  abolish  the  local  sanctuaries,  but  built  new 
shrines,  which  stood  till  the  time  of  Josiah,  for  the  gods 
of  the  foreign  wives  whom,  like  liis  father  David  (2  Sam. 
iii.  3),  he  married  against  the  Pentateuchal  law  (1  Kings 
xi. ;  2  Kings  xxiii.  13).  And  when  the  book  oi  Deut- 
eronomy describes  what  a  king  of  Israel  must  not  be, 
it  reproduces  line  for  line  the  features  of  the  court  of 
Solomon  (Deut.  xvii.  16  seq^.  Even  the  ordinances  of 
Solomon's  Temple  were  not  Levitically  correct.  The 
two  brazen  pillars  which  stood  at  the  porch  (1  Kings 
vii.  21)  were  not  different  from  the  forbidden  ma^ceba, 
or  from  the  twin  pillars  of  Hercules,  from  which  their 
Tyrian  artist  probably  copied  them;^^^  and  1  Kings  ix.  25 
can  hardly  bear  any  other  sense  than  that  the  king  offi- 
ciated at  the  altar  in  person  three  times  a  year.  That 
implies  an  entire  neglect,  on  his  part,  of  the  strict  law 
of  separation  between  the  legitimate  priesthood  and  lay- 
men ;  but  the  same  disregard  of  the  exclusive  sanctity 
of  the  Temple  priesthood,  and  of  that  twofold  cordon  of 
Aaronites  and  Levites  which  the  law  demands  to  protect 
the  Temple  from  profanation,  reappears  in  later  times, 
and  indeed  was  a  standing  feature  in  the  whole  history 


LECT.  IX.  OF  SOLOMON.  249 

of  Solomon's  Temple.  The  prophet  Ezekiel,  writing  after 
the  reforms  of  King  Josiah,  and  alluding  to  the  way  in 
which  the  Temple  service  was  carried  on  in  his  own  time, 
complains  that  uncircumcised  foreigners  were  appointed 
as  keepers  of  Jehovah's  charge  in  His  sanctuary  (Ezek. 
xliv.  6  seq.)P  Who  were  these  foreigners,  uncircumcised 
in  flesh  and  uncircumcised  in  heart,  by  whom  the  sanctity 
of  the  Temple  was  habitually  profaned  ?  The  history 
still  provides  details  to  make  this  quite  clear  to  us. 

There  was  one  important  body  of  foreigners  in  the 
service  of  the  kings  of  Judah  from  the  time  of  David 
downwards.  David  instituted  a  bodyguard  of  Kerethim 
and  Pelethim,  or  rather  of  Cretans  and  Philistines 
(2  Sam.  XV.  18),  to  whom  the  Hebrew  of  2  Sam.  xx.  23 
adds  a  name  which  has  been  obliterated  in  our  English 
version,  the  Carians.  These  foreign  soldiers  were  a 
sort  of  janissaries  attached  to  the  person  of  the  sove- 
reign, after  the  common  fashion  of  Eastern  monarchs, 
who  deem  themselves  most  secure  when  surrounded  by 
a  band  of  followers  uninfluenced  by  family  connections 
with  the  people  of  the  land.  The  constitution  of  the 
bodyguard  appears  to  have  remained  unchanged  to  the 
fall  of  the  Judaean  state.  The  Carians  are  again  men- 
tioned in  the  Hebrew  text  of  2  Kings  xi.  4,  and  the 
prophet  Zephaniah,  ^Titing  under  King  Josiah,  still 
speaks  of  men  connected  with  the  court,  who  were  clad 
in  foreign  garb  and  leaped  over  the  threshold.  To  leap 
over  the  threshold  of  the  sanctuary  is  a  Philistine  cus- 
tom (1  Sam.  V.  5);  and  when  the  prophet  adds  that  these 


250  THE  UNCIRCUMCISED  lect.  ix. 

Philistines  of  the  court  fill  their  master's  house  with 
violence  and  fraud,  vre  recognise  the  familiar  characters 
of  Oriental  janissaries  (Zeph.  i.  8,  9). 

The  foreign  guards,  whom  we  thus  see  to  have  con- 
tinued to  the  days  of  Zephaniah,  are  unquestionably 
identical  with  the  uncircumcised  foreigners  whom  Eze- 
kiel  found  in  the  Temple.  For  the  guard  accompanied 
the  king  when  he  visited  the  sanctuary  (1  Kings  xiv.  28), 
and  the  Temple  gate  leading  to  the  palace  was  called 
"the  gate  of  the  foot-guards"  (2  Kings  xi.  19).  Nay, 
so  intimate  was  the  connection  between  the  Temple  and 
the  palace  that  the  royal  bodyguard  were  also  the 
Temple  guards,  going  in  and  out  in  courses  every  week 
(2  Kiogs  xi.  9).  It  was  the  centurions  of  the  Carians 
and  the  footguards  who  aided  Jehoiada  in  setting  King 
Jehoash  on  the  throne;  and  2  Kings  xi.  11,  14,  pictures 
the  coronation  of  the  young  king  wliile  he  stood  by  a 
pillar,  "  according  to  custom,"  surrounded  by  the  foreign 
bodyguard,  who  formed  a  circle  about  the  altar  and  the 
front  of  the  shrine,  in  the  holiest  part  of  the  Temple 
court  (compare  Joel  ii.  17).^^^  Thus  it  appears  that  as 
long  as  Solomon's  Temple  stood,  and  even  after  the 
reforms  of  Josiah,  the  function  of  keeping  the  ward  of 
the  sanctuary,  which  by  Levitical  law  is  strictly  confined 
to  the  house  of  Levi,  on  pain  of  death  to  the  stranger 
who  comes  near  (Num.  iii.  38),  devolved  upon  uncircum- 
cised foreigners,  who,  according  to  the  law,  ought  never 
to  have  been  permitted  to  set  foot  within  the  courts  of 
the  Temple.     From  this  fact  the  inference  is  inevitable, 


LECT.  IX.  IN  THE  TEMPLE.  251 

that  under  the  first  Temple  the  pnncii)les  of  Levitical 
sanctity  were  never  recognised  or  enforced.  Even  the 
high  priests  had  no  conception  of  the  fundamental  im- 
portance which  the  middle  books  of  the  Pentateuch 
attach  to  tlie  concentric  circles  of  ritual  holiness  around 
and  within  the  sanctuary,  an  importance  to  be  measured 
by  the  consideration  that  the  atoning  ritual  on  which 
Jehovah's  forgiving  grace  depends  presupposes  tlie 
accurate  observance  of  every  legal  precaution  against 
profanation  of  the  holy  things.  This  being  so,  we  can- 
not be  surprised  to  find  that  the  priests  of  the  Temple 
were  equally  neglectful,  or  rather  equally  ignorant,  of 
the  correct  system  of  atoning  ordinances  which  form 
the  very  centre  of  the  Levitical  Law  to  which  all  other 
ordinances  of  sanctity  are  subservient.  The  sin  offering 
and  the  trespass  offering  are  not  once  mentioned  before 
the  Captivity.  On  the  contrary,  we  read  of  an  estab- 
lished custom  in  the  time  of  the  high  priest  Jehoiada 
that  sin  money  and  trespass  money  were  given  to  the 
priests  (2  Kings  xii.  16;  comp.  Hos.  iv.  8;  Am.  ii.  8).  This 
usage,  from  a  Levitical  point  of  view,  can  be  regarded  as 
nothing  but  a  gross  case  of  simony,  the  secularising  for 
the  advantage  of  the  priests  of  one  of  the  most  holy  and 
sacred  ordinances  of  the  Levitical  system.  Yet  this  we 
find  fixed  and  established,  not  in  a  time  of  national 
declension,  but  in  the  days  of  the  reforming  high  priest 
who  extirpated  the  worsliip  of  Baal. 

In  truth  the  first  Temple  had  not  that  ideal  position 
which  the  law  assigns  to  the  central  sanctuary.      It 


252  THE  KING  AND  lect.  ix. 

did  not  profess  to  be  tlie  one  lawful  centre  of  all 
worship,  and  its  pre-eminence  was  not  wholly  due  to 
the  ark,  but  lay  very  much  in  the  circumstance  that  it 
^vas  the  sanctuary  of  the  kings  of  Judah,  as  Bethel, 
according  to  Amos  vii.  13,  was  a  royal  chapel  of  the 
monarchs  of  Ephraim.  The  Temple  was  the  king's 
shrine ;  therefore  his  bodyguard  were  its  natural  ser- 
vants, and  the  sovereign  exercised  a  control  over  all  its 
ordinances,  such  as  the  Levitical  legislation  does  not 
contemplate  and  could  not  approve.  We  find  that  King 
Jehoash  introduced  changes  into  the  destination  of  the 
Temple  revenues.  In  his  earlier  years  the  rule  was  that 
the  priests  received  pecuniary  dues  and  gifts  of  various 
kinds  so  different  from  those  detailed  in  the  Pentateuch 
that  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  explain  each  one;  but, 
such  as  they  were,  the  priests  appropriated  them  subject 
to  an  obligation  to  maintain  the  fabric  of  the  Temple. 
King  Jehoash,  however,  found  that  wdiile  the  priests 
pocketed  their  dues  nothing  was  done  for  the  repair  of 
the  Temple,  and  he  therefore  ordained  that  all  moneys 
brought  into  the  Temple  should  be  paid  over  for  the 
repaii's  of  the  house,  with  the  exception  of  the  trespass 
and  sin  money,  which  remained  the  perquisite  of  the 
priests.  Such  interference  with  the  sacred  dues  is  in- 
conceivable under  the  Levitical  system,  wdiich  strictly 
regulates  the  destination  of  every  offering. 

But,  indeed,  the  kings  of  Judah  regarded  the  trea- 
sury of  the  Temple  as  a  sort  of  reserve  fund  available 
for  political  purposes,  and  Asa  and  Hezekiah  drew  upon 


LECT.  IX.  THE  TEMPLE  253 

this   source  when  their  own    treasury  was  exhausted 
(1  Kmgs  XV.  18;  2  Kings  xviii.  15). 

With  this  picture  before  us,  we  are  no  longer  sur- 
prised to  find  that  Urijah,  or  Uriah,  the  priest  and 
friend  of  Isaiah,  whom  the  prophet  took  with  him  as  a 
faithful  witness  to  record  (Isa.  viii.  2),  co-operated 
with  King  Ahaz  in  substituting  a  new  altar,  on  a 
pattern  sent  from  Damascus,  for  the  old  brazen  altar  of 
Solomon,  and  in  general  allowed  the  king  to  regulate 
the  altar  service  as  he  pleased  (2  Kings  xvi.  10  scq). 
The  brazen  altar,  which,  according  to  the  book  of  Num- 
bers, even  the  Levites  could  not  touch  without  danger 
of  death,  was  reserved  for  the  king  to  inquire  by. 

The  force  of  these  facts  lies  in  the  circumstance 
that  they  cannot  be  explained  as  mere  occasional  devia- 
tions from  Levitical  orthodoxy.  The  admission  of 
uncircumcised  strangers  as  ministers  in  the  sanctuary 
is  no  breach  of  a  spiritual  precept  which  the  hard  heart 
of  Israel  was  unable  to  follow,  but  of  a  ceremonial  ordi- 
nance adapted  to  the  imperfect  and  unspiritual  state  of 
the  nation.  An  interest  in  correct  ritual  is  found  in 
the  least  spiritual  rehgions,  and  there  is  ample  proof 
that  it  was  not  lacking  in  Israel,  even  in  the  barbarous 
times  of  the  Judges.  The  system  of  ceremonial  sanctity 
was  calculated  to  give  such  Hat  to  the  Temple  and  its 
priesthood  that  there  was  every  motive  for  maintaining 
it  in  force  if  it  was  known  at  all.  But  in  reality  it  was 
violated  in  every  point.  All  the  divergences  from  Levi- 
tical ritual  lie  in  this  direction.  The  sharp  line  of  dis- 
12 


254  PERIOD  OF  lect.  ix.  j 

) 

tinction  between  laymen's  privileges  and  priestly  func-  ! 

tions  laid  down  in  the  Law  has  its  rationale  in  the 
theory  and  practice  of  atonement.  In  the  Temple  we 
find  irregular  atonements,  a  lack  of  precise  grades  of 
holiness,  incomplete  recognition  of  the  priestly  preroga- 
tive, subordination  of  the  priesthood  to  the  palace 
carried  so  far  that  Abiathar  is  deposed  from  the  priest- 
hood, and  Zadok,  who  was  not  of  the  old  priestly  family 
of  Shiloh,  set  in  his  place  by  a  mere  fiat  of  King  Solo- 
mon/""^  And,  along  with  this  want  of  clear  definition  in 
the  inner  circles  of  ceremonial  holiness,  we  naturally 
find  that  the  exclusive  sanctity  of  the  nation  was  not 
understood  in  a  Levitical  sense ;  for  not  only  Solomon 
but  David  himself  intermarried  with  heathen  nations, 
and  Absalom,  the  son  of  a  Sjrrian  princess,  was  the 
recognised  heir  to  the  throne  on  account  oi  his  mother's 
dignity,  and  became,  through  his  daughter,  the  progeni- 
tor of  the  later  kings  of  Judah.  All  these  facts  hang 
together ;  they  show  that  the  priests  of  the  Temple,  and 
righteous  kings  like  David,  were  as  ignorant  of  the 
Levitical  theory  of  sanctity  as  the  mass  of  the  vulgar 
and  the  unrighteous  kings. 

The  Temple  of  Solomon  never  stood  contrasted  with 
the  popular  high  places  as  the  seat  of  the  Levitical 
system,  holding  forth  in  their  purity  the  typical  ordi- 
nances of  atonement  which  the  popular  worship  ignored. 
The  very  features  which  separate  the  religion  of  the 
ritual  law  from  the  traditional  worship  of  the  high 
places  are  those  which  the  guardians  of  the  Temple 
systematically  ignored. 


LECT.  IX.  THE  JUDGES.  255 

Let  us  now  go  back  beyond  the  age  of  Solomon  to 
the  period  of  the  Judges,  and  the  age  of  national  revival 
which  followed  under  Samuel,  Saul,  and  David.  We 
need  not  again  dwell  on  the  fact  that  the  whole  religion 
of  the  time  of  the  Judges  was  Levitically  false.  Even 
the  divinely  chosen  leaders  of  the  nation  knew  not  the 
law  (supra,  p.  220).  What  is  important  for  our  argument 
is  to  observe  that  breaches  of  the  law  were  not  confined 
to  times  of  rebellion  against  Jehovah.  From  the  stand- 
point of  the  Pentateuchal  ritual,  Israel's  repentance  was 
itself  illegal  in  form.  Acts  of  true  worship,  which 
Jehovah  accepted  as  the  tokens  of  a  penitent  heart  and 
answered  by  deeds  of  deliverance,  were  habitually  asso- 
ciated with  illegal  sanctuaries.  At  Bochim  the  people 
wept  at  God's  rebuke  and  sacrificed  to  the  Lord  (Jud.  ii. 
5).  Deborah  and  Barak  opened  their  campaign  at  the 
sanctuary  of  Kedesh.  Jehovah  Himself  commanded 
Gideon  to  build  an  altar  and  do  sacrifice  at  Ophrah,  and 
this  sanctuary  still  existed  in  the  days  of  the  historian 
(Judges  vi.  24).  Jephthah  spake  all  his  words  "  before 
the  Lord"  at  Mizpah  or  Eamoth  Gilead,  the  ancient 
sanctuary  of  Jacob,  when  he  went  forth  in  the  spirit  of 
the  Lord  to  overthrow  the  Ammonites  (Jud.  xi.  11, 
29 ;  Gen.  xxxi.  45,  54),  and  his  vow  before  the  campaign 
was  a  vow  to  do  sacrifice  in  Mizpah. 

We  are  accustomed  to  speak  of  the  sacrifices  of 
Gideon  and  Manoah  as  exceptional,  and,  no  doubt,  they 
were  so  if  our  standard  is  the  law  of  the  Pentateuch. 
But  in  that  case  all  true  religion  in  that  period  was 


256  THE  TEMPLE  lect.  ix. 


exceptional;  for  all  God's  acts  of  grace  mentioned  in 
the  book  of  Judges,  all  His  calls  to  repentance,  and  all 
the  ways  in  which  He  appears  from  time  to  time  to 
support  His  people,  and  to  show  Himself  their  living 
God,  ready  to  forgive  in  spite  of  their  disobedience,  are 
connected  with  this  same  local  worship.  The  call  to 
repentance  is  never  a  call  to  put  aside  the  local  sanc- 
tuaries and  worship  only  before  the  ark  at  Shiloh.  On 
the  contrary,  the  narrator  assumes,  without  question,  the 
standpoint  of  the  popular  religion,  and  never  breathes  a 
doubt  that  Jehovah  was  acceptably  worshipped  in  the 
local  shrines.  In  truth,  no  other  judgment  on  the  case 
was  possible  ;  for  through  all  this  period  Jehovah's 
gracious  dealings  with  His  people  expressed  His  accept- 
ance of  the  local  worship  in  unambiguous  language.  If 
the  Pentateuchal  programme  of  worship  and  the  rules 
which  it  lays  down  for  the  administration  of  the  dis- 
pensation of  grace  existed  in  these  days,  they  were  at 
least  absolutely  suspended.  It  was  not  according  to 
the  law  that  Jehovah  administered  His  grace  to  Israel 
during  the  period  of  the  Judges. 

Nevertheless  the  fundamental  requisites  for  a  prac- 
tical observance  of  the  Pentateuchal  worship  existed  in 
these  days.  The  ark  was  settled  at  Shiloh ;  a  legitimate 
priesthood  ministered  before  it.  There  is  no  question 
that  the  house  of  Eli  were  the  ancient  priesthood  of  the 
ark.  It  was  to  the  clan,  or  father's  hoii,se,  of  Eli,  accord- 
ing to  1  Sam.  ii.  27  seq.,  that  Jehovah  appeared  in 
Egypt,  choosing  him  as  His  priest  from  all  the  tribes  of 


LECT.  IX.  A7  SHILOH.  "ihl 

Israel.  The  priesthood  was  legitimate,  and  so  was  the 
sanctuary  of  Shiloh,  which  Jeremiah  calls  Jehovah's 
place,  where  He  set  His  name  at  the  first  (Jer.  vii. 
12).  Here  therefore,  if  anywhere  in  Israel,  the  law  must 
have  had  its  seat;  and  the  worship  of  Shiloh  must  have 
preserved  a  memorial  of  the  Mosaic  ritual. 

We  have  an  amount  of  detailed  information  as  to 
the  ritual  of  Shiloh,  which  shows  the  importance  attached 
to  points  of  ceremonial  religion.  Shiloh  was  visited  by 
pilgrims  from  the  surrounding  country  of  Ephraim,  not 
three  times  a  year  according  to  the  Pentateuchal  law, 
but  at  an  annual  feast.  This  appears  to  have  been  a 
vintage  feast,  like  the  Pentateuchal  Feast  of  Tabernacles, 
for  it  was  accompanied  by  dances  in  the  vineyards  ( Jud. 
xxi.  21),  and  according  to  the  correct  rendering  of  1  Sam. 
i.  20,  21,  it  took  place  when  the  new  year  came  in,  that 
is,  at  the  close  of  the  agricultural  year,  which  ended  with 
the  ingathering  of  the  vintage  (Exod.  xxxiv.  22).  It  had 
not  a  strictly  national  character,  for  in  Judges  xxL  19 
it  appears  to  be  only  locally  known,  and  to  have  the 
character  of  a  village  festival.  Indeed  a  quite  similar 
feast  was  observed  at  Shechem  (Jud.  ix.  27).^^^ 

There  was,  however,  a  regular  sacrifice  performed 
by  each  worshipper  in  addition  to  any  vow  he  might 
have  made  (1  Sam.  i.  21),  and  the  proper  due  to  be  paid 
to  the  priests  on  these  offerings  was  an  important  ques- 
tion. The  great  offence  of  Eli's  sons  was  that  they 
"  knew  not  Jehovah  and  the  priests'  dues  from  the 
people."      They  made  irregular  exactions,  and,  in  parti- 


258  THE  TEMPLE  lect.  ix. 

cular,  would  not  burn  the  fat  of  the  sacrifice  till  they 
had  secured  a  portion  of  uncooked  meat  (1  Sam.  ii. 
12  sc^.).  Under  the  Levitical  ordinance  this  claim 
was  perfectly  regular ;  the  worshipper  handed  over  the 
priest's  portion  of  the  flesh  along  with  the  fat,  and  j)art 
of  the  altar  ceremony  was  to  wave  it  before  Jehovah 
(Lev.  vii.  30  scg-.,  x.  15).  But  at  Shiloh  the  claim  was 
viewed  as  illegal  and  highly  wicked.  It  caused  men  to 
abhor  Jehovah's  offering,  and  the  greed  which  Eli's 
sons  displayed  in  this  matter  is  given  as  the  ground  of 
the  prophetic  rejection  of  the  whole  clan  of  priests  of 
Shiloh  (1  Sam.  ii.  17,  29). 

The  importance  attached  to  these  details  shows  how 
essential  to  the  religion  of  those  days  was  the  obser- 
vance of  all  points  of  established  ritual.  But  the  ritual 
was  not  that  of  the  Levitical  law.  Nay,  when  we  look 
at  the  worship  of  Shiloh  more  closely,  we  find  glaring 
departures  from  the  very  principles  of  the  Pentateuchal 
sanctuary.  The  ark  stood,  not  in  the  tabernacle,  but  in 
a  temple  with  doorposts  and  folding-doors,  which  were 
thrown  open  during  the  day  (1  Sam.  i,  9,  iii.  15).  Access 
to  the  temple  was  not  guarded  on  rules  of  Levitical 
sanctity.  According  to  1  Sam.  iii.  3,  Samuel,  as  a 
servant  of  the  sanctuary  who  had  special  charge  of  the 
doors  (ver.  15),  actually  slept  "  in  the  temple  of  Jehovah 
where  the  ark  of  God  was."  To  our  English  translators 
this  statement  seemed  so  incredible,  that  they  have 
ventured  to  change  the  sense  against  the  rules  of  the 
language.     One  can  hardly  wonder  at  them,  for,  accord- 


AT  SHILOH.  259 


ing  to  tlie  Law,  the  place  of  the  ark  could  be  entered 
only  by  the  high  priest  once  a  year,  and  with  special 
atoninf]^  services.  And,  to  make  the  thinoj  more  sur- 
prising,  Samuel  was  not  of  priestly  family.  His  father 
was  an  Ephrathite,  and  he  himself  came  to  the  Temple 
by  a  vow  of  his  mother  to  dedicate  him  to  Jehovah. 
By  the  Pentateuchal  law  such  a  vow  could  not  make 
Samuel  a  priest.  But  here  it  is  taken  for  granted  that 
he  becomes  a  priest  at  once.  As  a  child  he  ministers 
before  Jehovah,  wearing  the  ephod  which  the  law  con- 
fines to  the  high  priest,  and  not  only  this,  but  the  high 
priestly  mantle  {mcU,  E.  V.  coat,  1  Sam.  ii.  18,  19). 
And  priest  as  well  as  prophet  Samuel  continued  all  his 
life,  sacrificing  habitually  at  a  variety  of  sanctuaries. 
These  irregularities  are  sufficiently  startling.  They  pro- 
fane the  holy  ordinances,  which,  under  the  Law,  are 
essential  to  tlie  legitimate  sanctuary.  And,  above  all, 
it  is  noteworthy  that  the  service  of  the  great  day  of 
expiation  could  not  have  been  legitimately  performed  in 
the  temple  of  Shiloh,  where  there  is  no  awful  seclusion 
of  the  ark  in  an  inner  adyton,  veiled  from  every  eye,  and 
inaccessible  on  ordinary  occasions  to  every  foot.  These 
things  strike  at  the  root  of  the  Levitical  system  of 
access  to  God.  But  of  them  the  prophet  who  came  to 
EU  has  nothing  to  say.  He  confines  himself  to  the 
extortions  of  the  younger  priests. 

The  Law  was  as  little  known  in  Shiloh  as  among 
the  mass  of  the  people,  and  the  legitimate  priesthood, 
the  successors  of  Moses  and  Aaron,  are  not  judged  by 


260  THE  AGE  lect.  ix. 

God  according  to  the  standard  of  the  Law.  Where, 
then,  during  this  time  was  the  written  priestly  Torah 
preserved  ?  If  it  lay  neglected  in  some  comer  of  the 
sanctuary,  who  rescued  it  when  the  Philistines  destroyed 
the  Temple  after  the  battle  of  Ebenezer  ?  "Was  it  car- 
ried to  Nob  by  the  priests,  who  knew  it  not,  or  was  it 
rescued  by  Samuel,  who,  in  all  his  work  of  reformation, 
never  attempted  to  make  its  precepts  the  rule  of  reli- 
gious life  ? 

The  capture  of  the  ark,  the  fall  of  Shiloh,  and  the 
extension  of  the  Philistine  power  into  the  heart  of 
Mount  Ephraim  were  followed  by  the  great  national 
revival  successively  headed  by  Samuel,  Saul,  and  David. 
The  revival  of  patriotism  went  hand  in  hand  with  zeal 
for  the  service  of  Jehovah.  In  this  fresh  zeal  for  reli- 
gion, affairs  of  ritual  and  worship  were  not  neglected. 
Saul,  who  aimed  at  the  destruction  of  necromancy,  was 
also  keenly  aHve  to  the  sin  of  eating  flesh  with  the 
blood  (1  Sam.  xiv.  33) ;  the  ceremonially  unclean  might 
not  sit  at  his  table  (1  Sam.  xx.  26)  ;  and  there  are  other 
proofs  that  ritual  observances  were  viewed  as  highly 
important  (l  Sam.  xxi.  4  seq^. ;  2  Sam.  xi.  4),  though  the 
details  agree  but  ill  with  the  Levitical  ordinances.  The 
religious  patriotism  of  the  period  finds  its  main  expres- 
sion in  frequent  acts  of  sacrifice.  On  every  occasion  of 
national  importance  the  people  assemble  and  do  service 
at  some  local  sanctuary,  as  at  Mizpah  (1  Sam.  vii.  6,  9), 
or  at  Gilgal  (x.  8,  xi.  15,  xiii.  4,  9,  etc.).  The  seats 
of  authority   are   sanctuaries,   Piamah,   Bethel,   Gilgal 


LECT.  IX.  OF  SAMUEL.  ^  261 

(vii.  16,  17,  comp.  x.  3),  Beersheba  (viii.  2,  comp. 
Amos  V.  5,  viii.  14),  Hebron  (2  Sam.  ii.  1,  xv.  12). 
Saul  builds  altars  (1  Sam.  xiv.  35).  Samuel  can  make 
a  dangerous  visit  most  colourably  by  visiting  a  local 
sanctuary  like  Bethlehem,  with  an  offering  in  his  hand 
(1  Sam.  xvi.) ;  and  in  some  of  these  places  there  are 
annual  sacrificial  feasts  (1  Sam.  xx.  6).  At  the  same 
time  the  ark  is  settled  on  the  hill  (Gibeah)  at  Kirjath-' 
jearim,  where  Eleazar  ben  Abinadab  was  consecrated 
its  priest  (1  Sam.  vii.  1).  The  priests  of  the  house  of 
Eli  were  at  Nob,  where  there  was  a  regular  sanctuary 
with  shewbread,  and  no  less  than  eighty-five  priests 
wearing  a  linen  ephod  (1  Sam.  xxii.  18). 

It  is  quite  certain  that  Samuel,  with  aU  liis  zeal  for 
Jehovah,  made  no  attempt  to  bring  back  this  scattered 
worship  to  forms  of  legal  orthodoxy.  He  continued  to 
sacrifice  at  a  variety  of  shrines ;  and  his  yearly  circuit 
to  Bethel,  Gilgal,  and  Mizpah,  returning  to  Eamah, 
involved  the  recognition  of  all  these  altars  (1  Sam.  x.  3, 
xi.  15,  vii.  6,  9,  ix.  12). 

In  explanation  of  this  it  is  generally  argued  that 
the  age  was  one  of  religious  interregnum,  and  that 
Jehovah  had  not  designated  a  new  seat  of  worship  to 
succeed  the  ruined  sanctuary  of  Shiloh.  This  argu- 
ment might  have  some  weight  if  the  law  of  the  one 
sanctuary  and  the  one  priesthood  rested  only  on  the 
book  of  Deuteronomy,  which  puts  the  case  as  if  the 
introduction  of  a  strictly  unified  cultus  was  to  be 
deferred  till  the  peaceful  occupation  of  Palestine  was 


262  SAMUEL  AND  '  lect.  ix. 

« 

completed  (Deut.  xii.  8  sec[).  But  in  the  Levitical 
legislation  the  unification  of  cultus  is  not  attached  to  a 
fixed  place  in  the  land  of  Israel,  but  to  the  movable 
sanctuary  of  the  ark  and  to  the  priesthood  of  the  house 
of  Aaron.  All  the  law  of  sacrificial  observances  is 
given  in  connection  with  this  sanctuary,  and  on  the 
usual  view  of  the  Pentateuch  was  already  put  into  force 
l)efore  the  Israelites  had  gained  a  fixed  habitation.  In 
the  days  of  Samuel  the  ark  and  the  legitimate  priest- 
hood still  existed.  They  were  separated,  indeed, — the 
one  at  Kirjath-jearim,  the  other  at  Nob.  But  they  might 
easily  have  been  reunited ;  for  the  distance  between 
these  towns  is  only  a  forenoon's  walk.  Both  lay  in  that 
part  of  the  land  which  was  most  secure  from  Philistine 
invasion,  and  formed  the  centre  of  Saul's  authority. 
For  the  Philistines  generally  attacked  the  central  moun- 
tain district  of  Canaan  from  the  north  by  the  easy  roads 
leading  into  the  heart  of  the  land  from  the  plain  of 
Jezreel,  and  the  country  south  of  the  gorge  of  Michmash 
was  the  rallying  ground  of  Hebrew  independence.  Yet 
it  is  just  in  this  narrow  district,  which  a  man  might 
walk  across  in  a  day,  that  we  find  a  scattered  worship, 
and  no  attempt  to  concentrate  it  on  the  part  of  Samuel 
and  Saul.  There  was  no  plea  of  necessity  to  excuse 
this  if  Samuel  knew  the  Levitical  law.  Why  should  he 
go  from  town  to  town  making  sacrifice  in  local  high 
places  from  which  the  sanctuary  of  Nob  was  actually 
visible  ?  The  Law  does  not  require  such  tribute  at  the 
hands  of  individuals.     Except  at  the  great  pilgrimage 


LECT.  IX.  THE  HIGH  PLACES.  263 

feasts  the  private  Israelite  is  not  called  upon  to  bring 
any  other  sacrifice  than  tlie  trespass  or  sin  offering 
when  he  has  committed  some  offence.  But  Samuel's 
sacrifices  were  not  sin  offerings ;  they  were  mere  peace 
offerings,  the  material  of  sacrificial  feasts  which  under 
the  law  had  no  urgency  (1  Sam.  ix.,  xvi.).  What  was 
urgent  on  the  Levitical  theory  was  to  re-establish  the 
stated  burnt-offering  and  the  due  atoning  ritual  before 
the  ark  in  the  hands  of  the  legitimate  priesthood  and 
on  the  pattern  of  the  service  in  the  wilderness.  But  in 
place  of  doing  this  Samuel  falls  in  with  the  local  wor- 
ship as  it  had  been  practised  by  the  mass  of  the  people 
while  Sliiloh  still  stood.  He  deserts  the  legal  ritual  for 
a  service  which,  on  the  usual  theory,  was  mere  will- 
worship.  The  truth  plainly  is  that  Samuel  did  not 
know  of  a  systematic  and  exclusive  system  of  sacrificial 
ritual  confined  to  the  sanctuary  of  the  ark.  He  did  not 
know  a  model  of  sacred  service  earlier  than  the  choice 
of  Shiloh,  which  could  serve  the  people  when  Shiloh 
was  destroyed.  His  whole  conduct  is  inexplicable 
unless,  with  the  prophet  Jeremiah,  he  does  not  recog- 
nise the  Levitical  law  of  stated  sacrifice  as  part  of  the 
divine  ordinances  given  in  the  time  of  Moses  (Jer. 
vii.  22).  Grant  with  Jeremiah  that  sacrifice  is  a  free 
expression  *of  Israel's  homage  which  Jehovah  has  not 
yet  regulated  by  law,  and  at  once  the  conduct  of 
Samuel  is  clear,  and  Jehovah's  acceptance  of  his  ser- 
vice intelligible. 

At  length,  in  the  reign  of  David,  the  old  elements  of 


264  THE  AGE  lect.  ix. 

the  central  worship  were  reunited.  The  ark  was  brought 
up  from  Kirjath-jearim  to  Jerusalem,  and  Abiathar,  the 
representative  of  the  house  of  Eli,  was  there  as  priest. 
Israel  was  again  a  united  people,  and  there  was  no 
obstacle  to  the  complete  restitution  of  the  Levitical 
cultus,  had  it  been  recognised  as  the  only  true  expres- 
sion of  Israel's  service.  But  still  we  find  no  attempt 
to  restore  the  one  sanctuary  and  the  exclusive  privilege 
of  the  one  priesthood.  According  to  the  Law,  the  con- 
secration of  the  priesthood  is  not  of  man  but  of  God, 
and  Jehovah  alone  can  designate  the  priest  who  shall 
acceptably  approach  Him.  The  popular  religion  has 
another  view.  To  offer  sacrifice  is  the  privilege  of  every 
Israelite.  Saul  though  a  layman  had  done  so,  and  if 
his  sacrifice  at  Gilgal  was  a  sin,  the  offence  lay  not  in 
the  presumption  of  one  who  was  not  of  the  house  of 
Aaron,  but  in  the  impatience  which  had  moved  without 
waiting  for  the  promised  presence  of  the  prophet  (1 
Sam.  xiii.  8  seq^.  ;  compare  xiv.  35).  The  priest  there- 
fore was  the  people's  delegate;  his  consecration  was 
from  them  not  from  Jehovah  (Jud.  xvii.  5,  12 ;  1  Sam. 
vii.  1).  In  tliis  respect  David  was  not  more  orthodox 
than  Saul.  When  he  brought  up  the  ark  to  Jerusalem  he 
wore  the  priestly  ephod,  offered  sacrifices  in  person,  and, 
to  make  it  quite  clear  that  in  all  this  he  assumed  a 
priestly  function,  he  blessed  the  people  as  a  priest  in  the 
name  of  Jehovah  (2  Sam.  vi.  14,  18).  Nor  were  these 
irregularities  exceptional;  in  2  Sam.  viii.  18  we  read  that 
David's  sons  were  priests.     This  statement,  so  incredible 


LECT.  IX.  OF  DA  VID.  265 

on  the  traditional  theory,  has  led  our  English  version, 
following  the  Jewish  tradition  of  the  Targum,  to  change 
the  sense,  and  substitute  "  chief  rulers "  for  priests. 
But  the  Hebrew  word  means  priests,  and  can  mean 
nothing  else.  Equally  irregular  was  David's  relation  to 
the  high  places.  His  kingdom  was  first  fixed  at  the 
sanctuary  of  Hebron,  and  long  after  the  ark  was  brought 
up  to  Jerusalem  he  allowed  Absalom  to  visit  Hebron  in 
payment  of  a  sacrificial  vow  (2  Sam.  xv.  8,  12).  But 
in  fact  the  book  of  Kings  expressly  recognises  the 
worsliip  of  the  high  places  as  legitimate  up  to  the 
time  when  the  Temple  was  built  (1  Kings  iii.  2  seq). 
The  author  or  final  editor  of  the  history,  who  carries  the 
narrative  down  to  the  Captivity,  occupied  the  standpoint 
of  Josiah's  reformation.  He  knew  how  experience  had 
shown  the  many  high  places  to  be  a  constant  temptation 
to  practical  heathenism ;  and  though  he  is  aware  that 
de  facto  the  best  kings  tolerated  tlie  local  shrines  for 
centuries  after  the  temple  was  built,  he  holds  that  the 
sanctuary  of  Zion  ought  to  have  superseded  all  other 
altars.  But  before  the  temple  the  high  places  were  in 
his  judgment  legitimate.  This  again  is  intelligible 
enough  if  he  was  guided  by  the  law  of  Deuteronomy, 
and  understood  the  one  sanctuary  of  Deuteronomy  to  be 
none  other  than  the  temple  of  Jerusalem.  But  it  is  not 
consistent  with  the  traditional  view  of  the  Levitical 
legislation  as  a  system  completed  and  enforced  from  the 
days  of"the  wilderness  in  a  form  dependent  only  on  the 
existence  of  the  Aaronic  priesthood  and  the  ark.     And 


266  CONCLUSION  lect.  ix. 

so  we  actually  find  that  the  author  of  Chronicles,  who 
stands  on  the  basis  of  the  Levitical  legislation  and  the 
system  of  Ezra's  reformation,  refuses  to  accept  the  simple 
explanation  that  the  high  places  were  necessary  before 
the  temple,  and  assumes  that  in  David's  time  the  only 
sanctuary  strictly  legitimate  was  the  great  high  place 
of  Gibeon,  at  which  he  supposes  the  brazen  altar  to  have 
stood  (1  Chron.  xvi.  39  seq.,  xxi.  29  seq. ;  2  Chron.  i.  3 
scq!)  Of  all  this  the  author  of  Kings  knows  nothing. 
From  his  point  of  view  the  worship  of  the  high  places 
had  a  place  and  provisional  legitimacy  of  its  own  with- 
out reference  to  the  ark  or  the  brazen  altar.  ^'^ 

The  result  of  this  survey  is  that,  through  the  whole 
period  from  the  Judges  to  Ezekiel,  the  Law  in  its 
finished  system  and  fundamental  theories  was  never  the 
rule  of  Israel's  worship,  and  its  observance  was  never 
the  condition  of  the  experience  of  Jehovah's  grace. 
Although  many  individual  points  of  ritual  resembled  the 
ordinances  of  the  Law,  the  Levitical  tradition  as  a  whole 
had  as  little  force  in  the  central  sanctuary  as  with  the 
mass  of  the  people.  The  contrast  between  true  and 
false  worship  is  not  the  contrast  between  the  Levitical 
and  the  popular  systems.  The  freedom  of  sacrifice 
which  is  the  basis  of  the  popular  worship  is  equally  the 
basis  of  the  faith  of  Samuel,  David,  and  Elijah.  The 
reformers  of  Israel  strove  against  the  constant  lapses  of 
the  nation  into  syncretism,  or  the  worship  of  foreign 
gods,  but  they  did  not  do  so  on  the  ground  of  the 
Levitical  theory  of  Israel's  absolute  separation  from  the 


LECT.  IX.  FROM  HISTORY.  2G7 

nations  or  of  a  unique  holiness  radiating  from  the  one 
sanctuary  and  descending  in  widening  circles  through 
priests  and  Levites  to  the  ordinary  Israehte.  The  history 
itself  does  not  accept  the  Levitical  standard.  It  accords 
legitimacy  to  the  popular  sanctuaries  before  the  founda- 
tion of  the  temple,  and  represents  Jehovah  as  accepting 
the  offerings  made  at  them.  With  the  foundation  of  the 
temple  the  historian  regards  the  local  worship  as  super- 
seded, but  he  does  so  from  the  practical  point  of  view 
that  the  worship  there  was  in  later  times  of  heathenish 
character  (2  Kings  xvii.).  Nowhere  does  the  condemna- 
tion of  the  popular  religion  rest  on  the  original  consecra- 
tion of  the  tabernacle,  the  brazen  altar,  and  the  Aaronic 
priesthood  as  the  exclusive  channels  of  veritable  inter- 
course between  Jehovah  and  Israel. 

A  dim  consciousness  of  this  witness  of  history  is  pre- 
served in  the  fantastic  tradition  that  the  Law  was  lost 
and  restored  by  Ezra.  In  truth  the  people  of  Jehovah 
never  lived  under  tlie  law,  and  the  dispensation  of 
Divine  grace  never  followed  its  pattern  till  Israel  had 
ceased  to  be  a  nation.  The  history  of  Israel  refuses  to 
be  measured  by  the  traditional  theory  as  to  the  origin 
and  function  of  the  Pentateuch.  In  next  Lecture  we 
must  inquire  whether  the  prophets  confirm  or  modify 
this  result. 


268  DISCIPLINE  lect.  x. 


LECTUEE   X. 


THE  PKOPHETs/^^ 


A  SPECIAL  object  of  the  finished  Pentateuchal  system,  £is 
enforced  among  the  Jews  from  the  days  of  Ezra,  was  to 
make  the  people  of  Jehovah  visibly  different  from  the 
surrounding  nations.  The  principle  of  holiness  was  a 
principle  of  separation,  and  the  ceremonial  ordinances  of 
holiness,  whether  in  daily  life  or  in  the  inner  circles  of 
the  temple  worship,  were  so  many  visible  and  tangible 
fences  set  up  to  divide  Israel,  and  Israel's  religion,  from 
the  surrounding  Gentiles  and  their  religion.  Artificial 
as  this  system  may  appear,  the  history  proves  that  it 
was  necessary.  The  small  community  of  the  new 
Jerusalem  was  under  constant  temptations  to  mingle 
with  the  "  people  of  the  land."  Intermarriages,  such  as 
Ezra  and  Nehemiah  suppressed  by  a  supreme  effort, 
opened  a  constant  door  to  heathen  ideas  and  heathen 
morality.  The  religion  of  Jehovah  could  not  be  pre- 
served intact  without  isolating  the  people  of  Jehovah 
from  their  neighbours,  and  this  again  could  only  be  done 
through  a  highly  developed  system  of  national  customs 
and  usages,  enlisting  in  the  service  of  religious  purity 
the  force   of  habit,  and   the   natural   conservatism   of 


LECT.  X.  OF  THE  LA  W.  2G9 

Eastern  peoples  in  all  matters  of  daily  routine.  Long 
before  the  time  of  Christ  the  ceremonial  observances 
had  so  grown  into  the  life  of  the  Jews  that  national 
pride,  inborn  prejudice,  a  disgust  at  foreign  habits 
sucked  in  with  his  mother's  milk,  made  the  Israelite  a 
peculiar  person,  naturally  averse  to  contact  with  the 
surrounding  Gentiles,  and  quite  insensible  to  the 
temptations  which  had  drawn  his  ancestors  into  con- 
tinual apostasy.  The  hatred  of  the  human  race,  which, 
to  foreign  observers,  seemed  the  national  characteristic 
of  the  Jews  under  the  Eoman  Empire,  was  a  fault 
precisely  opposite  to  the  facility  with  which  the 
Israelites,  before  the  Captivity,  had  mingled  with  the 
heathen  and  served  their  gods.  This  change  was  un- 
doubtedly due  to  the  discipline  of  the  Law,  the  strict 
pedagogue,  as  St.  Paul  represents  it,  charged  to  watch 
the  steps  of  the  child  not  yet  fit  for  liberty.  Without 
the  Law  the  Jews  would  have  been  absorbed  in  the  | 
nations,  just  as  the  Ten  Tribes  were  absorbed  andj 
disappeared  in  their  captivity.  ' 

But  we  have  seen  in  the  last  two  Lectures  that  this 
legal  discipline  of  ceremonial  holiness  was  not  enforced 
in  Israel  before  Josiah,  nor,  indeed,  in  all  its  fulness,  at 
any  time  before  Ezra.  The  ordinary  life  of  Israel  was 
not  guarded  against  admixture  with  the  nations.  David 
married  the  Princess  Maacah  of  Geshur ;  Solomon  took 
many  strange  wives ;  Jehoram,  in  his  good  father's  life- 
time, wedded  the  half-heathen  Athaliah.  The  45th 
Psalm  celebrates  the  marriage  of  a  king,  the  anointed  of 


270  ISRAEL  AND  THE  NATIONS         lect.  x. 

Jehovah,  with  a  daughter  of  Tyre,  and  people  of  lower 
estate  were  not  more  concerned  to  keep  themselves 
apart  from  the  Gentiles.  Great  sections  of  the  nation 
were  indeed  of  mixed  blood.  The  population  of 
Southern  Judah  was  of  half- Arab  origin,  and  several 
of  the  clans  in  this  district  bear  names  which  indicate 
their  original  affinity  with  Midian  or  Edom ;  while  we 
know  that  in  the  time  of  the  Judges  and  later  many 
cities  like  Shechem  were  half  Israelite  and  half 
Canaanite.  This  mixture  of  blood  asserted  itself  in 
social  customs  inconsistent  with  the  Pentateuchal  law, 
and  precisely  identical  with  the  usages  of  the  heathen 
Semites.  Marriage  with  a  half-sister,  a  known  practice 
of  the  Phoenicians  and  other  Semites,  had  the  precedent  of 
Abraham  in  its  favour,  was  not  thought  inadmissible  in 
the  time  of  David  (2  Sam.  xiii.  13),  and  was  still  a 
current  practice  in  the  days  of  Ezekiel  (xxii.  11).  I 
choose  this  instance  as  peculiarly  striking,  but  it  is  not 
an  isolated  case.  There  is  ample  proof  in  other  ways 
that  relics  of  the  system  of  female  kinship,  and  peculiar 
laws  of  marriage  and  succession  proper  to  the  heathen 
Semites,  lingered  in  Israel  down  to  a  late  date.^^^  The 
social  system  of  the  nation  was  not  yet  consolidated  on 
distinctive  principles.  Even  in  the  practices  of  worship 
the  sanctuaries  of  Jehovah  had  much  in  common  with 
heathen  shrines,  and  this  holds  good,  not  merely  of  the 
local  high  places,  but,  as  we  saw  in  last  Lecture,  of  the 
Temple  of  Solomon  itself,  where  the  ceremonial  of 
Levitical  exclusiveness  was  never  enforced  according  to 


LECT.  X.  BEFORE  THE  EXILE.  271 

the  Pentateuch.  I  am  now  speaking  of  pmctice,  not  of 
theory,  and  I  apprehend  that  even  those  who  maintain 
that  the  whole  Pentateuch  was  then  extant  as  a  theoreti- 
cal system  must  admit  that  before  the  Exile  the  peda- 
gogic ordinances  of  that  system  were  not  the  practical 
instrument  by  which  the  distinctive  relation  of  Israel 
to  Jehovah  was  preserved,  and  the  people  hindered  from 
sinking  altogether  into  Canaanite  heathenism. 

It  was  through  an  instrumentality  of  a  very  different 
kind  that  Israel,  with  all  its  backslidings,  was  prevented 
from  wholly  forgetting  its  vocation  as  the  people  of 
Jehovah,  that  a  spark  of  higher  faith  was  kept  alive  in 
all  times  of  national  declension,  and  the  basis  laid  for 
that  final  work  of  reformation  which  at  length  made 
Israel  the  people  of  the  Law  not  only  in  name  but  in 
reality.  That  instrumentality  was  the  word  of  the 
prophets. 

The  conception  that  in  Jehovah  Israel  has  a  national 
God  and  Father,  with  a  special  claim  on  its  worship,  is 
not  in  itself  a  thing  peculiar  to  revealed  religion.  Other 
Semitic  tribes  had  their  tribal  gods.  Moab  is  the  people 
of  Chemosh,  and  the  members  of  the  nation  are  called 
sons  and  daughters  of  the  national  deity  even  in  the 
Israelite  lay,  Numbers  xxi.  29  (compare  Malachi  ii. 
1 1).  All  religion  was  tribal  or  national.  "  Thy  people," 
says  Euth,  "  shall  be  my  people,  and  thy  God  my  God  " 
(Euth  i.  IG).  "Hath  any  nation  changed  its  god?" 
asks  Jeremiah  (ii.  11).  Jehovah  Himself,  according  to 
Deut.  iv.  19,  has  appointed  the  heavenly  host  and  other 


272  STANDPOINT  OF  lect.  x. 

false  deities  to  the  heathen  nations,  while  He  conversely 
is  Himself  the  "portion  of  Jacob"  (Jer.  x.  16;  comp. 
Deut.  xxix.  26).  In  the  early  times,  to  be  an  Israelite 
and  to  be  a  worshipper  of  Jehovah  is  the  same  thing. 
To  be  banished  from  the  land  of  Israel,  the  inheritance 
of  Jehovah,  is  to  be  driven  to  serve  other  gods  (1  Sam. 
xxvi.  19). 

These  are  ideas  common  to  all  Semitic  rehgions. 
But  in  Semitic  heathenism  the  relation  between  a  nation 
and  its  god  is  natural.  It  does  not  rest  on  choice  either 
on  the  nation's  part  or  on  the  part  of  the  deity.  The 
god,  so  far  as  we  can  judge,  appears  to  have  been  con- 
ceived as  father  of  his  people  in  a  physical  sensa  At 
any  rate,  the  god  and  the  worshippers  formed  a  natural 
unity,  which  was  also  bound  up  with  the  land  they 
occupied.  It  was  deemed  necessary  for  settlers  in  a 
country  to  "  know  the  manner  of  the  god  of  the  land  " 
(2  Kings  xvii.  26).  The  dissolution  of  the  nation 
destroys  the  national  religion,  and  dethrones  the  national 
deity.  The  god  can  no  more  exist  without  his  people 
than  the  nation  without  its  sod. 

The  mass  of  the  Israelites  hardly  seem  to  have  risen 
above  this  conception.  The  Pentateuch  knows  the 
nation  well  enough  to  take  it  for  granted  that  in  their 
banishment  from  "  the  land  of  Jehovah,"  where  He  can 
no  longer  be  approached  in  the  sanctuaries  of  the 
popular  worship,  they  will  serve  other  gods,  wood  and 
stone  (Deut.  xxviii.  36 ;  comp.  Hosea  ix.).  Nay,  it  is 
plain  that  a  great  part  of  Israel  imagined,  like  their 


LECT.  X.  THE  PROPHETS.  273 

heatlien  neighbours,  that  Jehovah  had  need  of  them  as 
much  as  they  had  need  of  Him,  that  their  worship  and 
service  could  not  be  indifferent  to  Him,  that  He  must, 
by  a  natural  necessity,  exert  His  power  against  their 
enemies  and  save  His  sanctuaries  from  profanation. 
This  indeed  was  the  constant  contention  of  the  prophets 
who  opposed  Micah  and  Jeremiah  (Micah  iii.  11 ;  Jer. 
vii.  4  seq.,  xxvii  1  seq^ ;  and  from  their  point  of  view, 
the  captivity  of  Judah  was  the  final  and  hopeless 
collapse  of  the  religion  of  Jehovah.  The  religion  of  the 
true  prophets  was  very  different.  They  saw  Jehovah's 
hand  even  in  the  fall  of  the  state.  The  Assyrian  and 
the  Babylonian  were  His  servants  (Isa.  x.  5  scci. ;  Jer. 
xxvii  6),  and  the  catastrophe  which  overwhelmed  the 
land  of  Israel,  and  proved  that  the  popular  religion  was 
a  lie,  was  to  the  spiritual  faith  the  clearest  proof  that 
Jehovah  is  not  only  Israel's  God,  but  the  Lord  of  the 
whole  earth.  As  the  death  and  resurrection  of  our 
Lord  are  the  supreme  proof  of  the  spiritual  truths  of 
Christianity,  so  the  death  of  the  old  Hebrew  state  and 
the  resurrection  of  the  religion  of  Jehovah  in  a  form 
independent  of  the  old  national  life  is  the  supreme 
proof  that  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament  is  no  mere 
natural  variety  of  Semitic  monolatry,  but  a  dispensation 
of  the  true  and  eternal  religion  of  the  spiritual  God. 
The  prophets  w^ho  foresaw  the  catastrophe  without 
alarm  and  without  loss  of  faith  stood  on  a  foundation 
diverse  from  that  of  natural  religion.  They  were  the 
organs  of  a  spiritual  revelation,  who  had  stood,  as  they 


274  THE  PROPHET  lect.  x. 

themselves  say,  in  tlie  secret  counsel  of  Jehovah  (Amos 
iii.  7;  Jer.  xxiii.  18,  22),  ard  knew  the  law  of  His 
working,  and  the  goal  to  which  He  was  guiding  His 
people.  It  was  not  the  law  of  ordinances,  but  the  living 
prophetic  word  in  the  midst  of  Israel,  that  separated  the 
religion  of  Jehovah  from  the  religion  of  Baal  or  Chemosh, 
and  gave  it  that  vitality  which  survived  the  overthrow 
of  the  ancient  state,  and  the  banishment  of  Jehovah's 
people  from  His  land. 

The  characteristic  mark  of  a  true  prophet  is  that  he 
has  stood  in  the  secret  counsel  of  Jehovah,  and  speaks 
the  words  which  he  has  heard  from  His  mouth.  "  The 
Lord  Jehovah,"  says  Amos,  "  will  not  do  anything  with- 
out revealing  his  secret  to  his  servants  the  prophets. 
The  lion  hath  roared,  who  will  not  fear  ?  The  Lord 
Jehovah  hath  spoken,  who  can  but  prophesy?"  But 
the  prophets  do  not  claim  universal  foreknowledge. 
The  secret  of  Jehovah  is  the  secret  of  His  relations  to 
Israel.  "  The  secret  of  Jehovah  belongs  to  them  that 
fear  him,  and  he  will  make  them  know  his  covenant " 
(Psalm  XXV.  14).  "  If  they  have  stood  in  my  secret 
counsel,  let  them  proclaim  my  words  to  my  people,  that 
they  may  return  from  their  evil  way  "  (Jer.  xxiii.  22). 
The  word  secret  or  privy  counsel  {sod)  is  that  used  of  a 
man's  intimate  personal  circle.  The  prophets  stand  in 
this  circle.  They  are  in  sympathy  with  Jehovah's 
heart  and  will,  their  knowledge  of  His  counsel  is  no 
mere  intellectual  gift  but  a  moral  thing.  They  are  not 
diviners  but  intimates  of  Jehovah.    Balaam,  in  spite  of 


LECT.  X.  JEHOVAH'S  INTIMATE.  275 

his  predictions,  is  not  in  the  Old  Testament  called  a 
prophet.     He  is  only  a  soothsayer  (Josh.  xiii.  22). 

Why  has  Jehovah  a  circle  of  intimates  within 
Israel,  confidants  of  His  moral  purpose  and  acquainted 
with  what  He  is  about  to  do  ?  The  prophets  them- 
selves supply  a  clear  answer  to  this  question.  There 
are  personal  relations  between  Jehovah  and  His  people, 
analogous  to  those  of  human  friendship  and  love. 
"  Wlien  Israel  was  a  child  I  loved  him,  and  called  my 
son  out  of  Egypt.  ...  I  taught  Ephraim  to  go,  holding 
them  by  their  arms.  ...  I  drew  them  with  human 
bands,  with  cords  of  love  "  (Hosea  xi.  1).  "  You  alone 
have  I  known,"  says  Jehovah  through  Amos,  "  of  all  the 
families  of  the  earth"  (Amos  iii.  2).  This  relation 
between  Jehovah  and  Israel  is  not  a  mere  natural,  unin- 
telligent and  physically  indissoluble  bond  such  as 
unites  Moab  to  Chemosh.  It  rests  on  free  love  and 
gracious  choice.  As  Ezekiel  xvi.  G  puts  it,  Jehovah 
saw  and  pitied  Jerusalem,  when  she  lay  as  an  infant 
cast  forth  to  die,  and  said  unto  her.  Live.  The  relation 
is  moral  and  personal,  and  receives  moral  and  personal 
expression.  Jehovah  guides  His  people  by  His  word, 
and  admits  them  to  the  knowledge  of  His  ways.  But 
He  does  not  speak  directly  to  every  Israelite  (Deut. 
xviii.  15  scq^).  The  organs  of  His  loving  and  personal 
intercourse  with  the  people  of  His  choice  are  the 
prophets.  "  By  a  prophet  Jehovah  brought  Israel  out  of 
Egypt,  and  by  a  prophet  he  was  preserved  "  (Hosea 
xii.  13).     "I  brought  you  up  from  the  land  of  Egypt, 


276  PROPHECY  AND  lect.  x. 


and  led  you  in  the  wilderness  forty  years  to  possess  the 
land  of  the  Amorites.  And  I  raised  up  of  your  sons  for 
prophets,  and  of  your  young  men  for  Nazarites.  Is  it 
not  even  thus,  0  ye  children  of  Israel  ?"  (Amos  ii.  10, 11). 
The  prophets,  you  perceive,  regard  their  function  as  an 
essential  element  in  the  national  religion.  It  is  they 
who  keep  alive  the  constant  intercourse  of  love  between 
Jehovah  and  His  people  which  distinguishes  the  house  of 
Jacob  from  all  other  nations ;  it  is  their  work  which 
makes  Israel's  religion  a  moral  and  spiritual  religion. 

To  understand  this  point  we  must  remember  that 
in  the  Old  Testament  the  distinctive  features  of  the 
religion  of  Jehovah  are  habitually  represented  in  con- 
trast to  the  religion  of  the  heathen  nations.  It  is  taken 
for  granted  that  the  religion  of  the  nations  does  in  a 
certain  sense  address  itself  to  man's  legitimate  needs. 
The  religion  of  Israel  would  not  be  the  aU-sufiicient 
thing  it  is,  if  the  nation  did  not  find  in  Jehovah  the 
true  supply  of  those  wants  for  which  other  nations  turn 
to  the  delusive  help  of  the  gods  who  are  no  gods.  Now, 
in  all  ancient  religions,  and  not  least  in  Semitic 
heathenism,  it  is  a  main  object  of  the  worshipper  to 
obtain  oracles  from  his  god.  The  uncertainties  of 
human  life  are  largely  due  to  man's  ignorance.  His 
life  is  environed  by  forces  which  he  cannot  understand 
or  control,  and  which  seem  to  sport  at  will  with  his 
existence  and  his  happiness.  All  these  forces  are 
viewed  as  supernatural,  or  rather — for  in  these  ques- 
tions it  is  important  to  eschew  metaphysical  notions 


LECT.  X.  DIVINATION,  277 

not  known  to  early  thinkers — they  are  divine  beings, 
with  which  man  can  enter  into  league  only  by  means 
of  his  religion.  They  are  to  be  propitiated  by  offerings, 
and  consulted  by  enchantments  and  soothsayers.  In 
Semitic  heathenism  the  deity  whom  a  tribe  worships 
as  its  king  (Moloch)  or  lord  (Baal)  is  often  identified 
with  some  supreme  power  of  nature,  with  the  mighty 
sun,  the  lord  of  the  seasons,  or  with  the  heavens  that 
send  down  rain,  or  with  some  great  planet  whose 
stately  march  through  the  skies  appears  to  regulate 
the  cycles  of  time.  These  are  the  higher  forms  of 
religion.  In  lower  types  the  deity  is  a  sort  of  fetich  or 
totem  more  immediately  identified  with  earthly  objects, 
— animals,  trees,  or  the  like.  But  in  any  case  the  god 
is  a  member  of  the  chain  of  hidden  natural  agencies  on 
which  man  is  continually  dependent,  and  with  which 
it  is  essential  to  establish  friendly  relations.  Such 
relations  are  attainable,  for  man  himself  is  physically 
connected  with  the  natural  powers.  They  produced 
him ;  he  is  the  son  of  his  god  as  well  as  his  servant ; 
and  so  the  divinity,  if  rightly  questioned  and  carefully 
propitiated,  will  speak  to  the  worshipper  and  aid  him 
by  his  counsel  as  weU  as  his  strength.  In  all  this 
there  is,  properly  speaking,  no  moral  element.  The 
divine  forces  of  nature  seem  to  be  personified,  for  they 
hear  and  speak.  But,  strictly  speaking,  the  theory  of 
such  religion  is  the  negation  of  personality.  It  is  on 
the  physical  side  of  his  being  that  man  has  relations  to 
the  godhead.  Readers  of  Plato  will  remember  how 
13 


278  PROPHECY  AND  lect.  x. 

clearly  tliis  comes  out  in  the  Timoeus,  where  the 
faculty  of  divination  is  connected  with  the  appetitive 
and  irrational  part  of  man's  nature.  ^  Tliat,  of  course,  is 
a  philosophical  explanation  of  popular  notions.  But  it 
indicates  a  characteristic  feature  in  the  religion  of 
heathenism.  It  is  not  as  an  intellectual  and  moral 
being  that  man  has  fellowship  with  deities  that  are 
themselves  identified  with  physical  powers.  The 
divine  element  in  man  through  which  he  has  access 
to  his  god  lies  in  the  mysterious  instincts  of  his  lower 
nature ;  and  paroxysms  of  artificially  produced  frenzy, 
dreams,  and  diseased  visions  are  the  accepted  means  of 
intercourse  with  the  godhead. 

AccoTdingly  an  essential  element  in  the  religion  of 
the  heathen  Semites  was  divination  in  its  various  forms, 
of  which  so  many  are  enumerated  in  Dent,  xviii.  10,  11. 
The  diviner  procured  an  oracle,  predicting  future  events, 
detecting  secrets,  and  directing  the  worshipper  what 
choice  to  make  in  difficult  points  of  conduct.  Such 
oracles  were  often  sought  in  private  life,  but  they  were 
deemed  altogether  indispensable  in  the  conduct  of  the 
state,  and  the  soothsayers  were  a  necessary  part  of  the 
political  establishment  of  every  nation.  The  Old 
Testament  takes  it  for  granted  that  Jehovah  acknow- 
ledges and  supplies  in  Israel  the  want  which  in  other 
nations  is  met  by  the  practice  of  divination.  The 
place  of  the  soothsayer  is  supplied  by  the  prophets  of 
Jehovah.  "  These  nations,  which  thou  shalt  dispossess, 
hearken  unto  soothsayers  and  diviners ;  but  as  for  thee, 


LECT.  X.  DIVINATION.  279 

Jehovah  thy  God  siiffereth  thee  not  to  do  so.  A 
prophet  from  the  midst  of  thee,  of  thy  brethren,  like 
unto  me,  will  Jehovah  thy  God  raise  up  unto  thee ; 
unto  liim  shall  ye  hearken  "  (Deut.  xviii.  14  seq^. 

In  the  popular  religion,  where  the  attributes  of 
Jehovah  were  not  clearly  marked  off  from  those  of  the 
heathen  Baalim,  little  distinction  was  made  between 
prophet  and  soothsayer.  The  word  prophet,  nab%\  is  not 
exclusively  Hebrew.  It  appears  to  be  identical  with 
the  Assyrian  Nebo,  the  spokesman  of  the  gods,  answer- 
ing to  the  Greek  Hermes.  And  we  know  that  there 
were  prophets  of  Baal,  whose  orgies  are  described  in 
1  Kings  xviii.,  where  we  learn  that  they  sought  access 
to  their  god  in  exercises  of  artificial  frenzy  carried  so 
far  that,  like  modern  fanatics  of  the  East,  they  became 
insensible  to  pain,  and  passed  into  a  sort  of  temporary 
madness,  to  which  a  supernatural  character  was  no 
doubt  ascribed,  as  is  still  the  case  in  similar  religions. 
This  Canaanite  prophetism  then  was  a  kind  of  divination, 
based,  like  all  divination,  on  the  notion  that  the  irra- 
tional part  of  man's  nature  is  that  which  connects  him 
with  the  deity.  It  appears  that  there  were  men  calling 
themselves  prophets  of  Jehovah,  who  occupied  no  higher 
standpoint.  Saul  and  his  servant  went  to  Samuel  with 
the  fourth  part  of  a  shekel  as  fee  to  ask  him  a  question 
about  lost  asses,  and  the  story  is  told  as  if  this  were 
part  of  the  business  of  a  common  seer.  In  the  time  of 
Isaiah,  the  stay  and  staff  of  Jerusalem,  the  necessary 
props  of  the  state,  included  not  only  judges  and  warriors 


280  PROFESSIONAL  AND  lect.  x. 

but  prophets,  diviners,  men  skilled  in  presages,  and  such 
as  understood  enchantments  (Isa.  iii.  2,  3,  Heb.).  Simi- 
larly Micah  iii.  5  seq^,  identifies  the  prophets  and  the 
diviners,  and  places  them  alongside  of  the  judges  and 
the  priests  as  leaders  of  the  nation.  "  The  heads  there- 
of give  judgment  for  bribes,  and  the  priests  give  legal 
decisions  for  hire,  and  the  prophets  divine  for  money ; 
yet  they  lean  upon  Jehovah  and  say.  Is  not  Jehovah 
among  us  ?  none  evil  can  come  upon  us."  You  observe 
that  this  false  i)rophecy,  which  is  nothing  else  than 
divination,  is  practised  in  the  name  of  Jehovah,  and  has 
a  recognised  place  in  the  state.  And  so,  when  Amos 
appeared  at  Bethel  to  speak  in  Jehovah's  name,  the 
priest  Amaziah  identified  him  with  the  professional 
prophets  who  were  fed  by  their  trade  (Amos  vii.  12), 
and  formed  a  sort  of  guild,  as  the  name  "  sons  of  the 
prophets  "  indicates. 

With  these  prophets  by  trade  Amos  indignantly 
refuses  to  be  identified.  "  I  am  no  prophet,"  he  cries, 
"  nor  the  member  of  a  prophetic  guild,  but  an  herdsman, 
and  a  plucker  of  sycomore  fruit.  And  Jehovah  took 
me  as  I  followed  the  flock,  and  said  unto  me.  Go,  pro- 
phesy unto  my  people  Israel."  These  words  of  the 
earliest  prophetic  book  clearly  express  the  standpoint 
of  spiritual  prophecy.  With  the  established  guilds,  the 
official  prophets,  if  I  may  so  call  them,  the  men  skilled 
in  enchantment  and  divination,  whose  business  was  a 
trade  involving  magical  processes  that  could  be  taught 
and  learned,  Amos,  Isaiah,  and  Micah  have  nothing  in 


LECT.  X.  TRUE  PROPHETS.  281 

common ;  tliey  declaim  against  the  accepted  prophecy 
of  their  time,  as  they  do  against  all  other  parts  of  the 
national  religion  which  were  no  longer  discriminated 
from  heathenism.  They  accept  the  principle  that  pro- 
phecy is  essential  to  religion.  They  admit  that  Jeho- 
vah's guidance  of  His  people  must  take  the  form  of 
continual  revelation,  supplying  those  needs  which  drive 
heathen  nations  and  the  unspiritual  masses  of  Israel  to 
practise  divination.  But  the  method  of  true  revelation 
has  nothing  in  common  with  the  art  of  the  diviner. 
"  When  they  say  unto  you,  Consult  the  familiar  spirits 
and  wizards  that  peep  and  mutter  :  should  not  a  people 
consult  its  God  ?  shall  they  go  to  the  dead  on  behalf  of 
the  living?"  (Isa.  viii  19).  Jehovah  is  a  living  God,  a 
moral  and  personal  being.  He  speaks  to  His  prophets, 
not  in  magical  processes  or  through  the  visions  of  poor 
phrenetics,  but  by  a  clear  intelligible  word  addressed  to 
the  intellect  and  the  heart.  The  characteristic  of  the 
true  prophet  is  that  he  retains  his  consciousness  and 
self-control  under  revelation.  He  is  fiUed  with  might 
by  the  spirit  of  Jehovah  (Micah  iii.  8).  Jehovah 
speaks  to  him  as  if  He  grasped  him  with  a  strong  hand 
(Isa.  viiL  11).  The  word  is  within  his  heart  like  a 
burning  fire  shut  up  in  his  bones  (Jer.  xx.  9),  so  that  he 
cannot  remain  silent.  But  it  is  an  intelligible  word, 
winch  speaks  to  the  prophet's  own  heart  and  conscience, 
forbidding  Isaiah  to  walk  in  the  way  of  the  corrupt 
nation,  filling  Micah  with  power  to  declare  unto  Jacob 
his  transgression,  supporting  the  heart  of  Jeremiah  with 


282  RELIGIOUS  FUNCTION  lect.  x. 

an  inward  joy  amidst  all  his  trials  (Jer.  xv.  16).  The 
first  condition  of  such  prophecy  are  pure  lips  and  a 
heart  right  with  God.  Isaiah's  lips  are  purged  and  his 
sin  forgiven  before  he  can  go  as  Jehovah's  messenger 
(Isa.  vi.) ;  and  to  Jeremiah  the  Lord  says,  "  If  thou 
return,  then  wiU  I  bring  thee  back,  and  thou  shalt  stand 
before  me :  and  if  thou  take  forth  the  precious  from  the 
vile,  thou  shalt  be  as  my  mouth  :  let  them — the  sinful 
peox^le — turn  to  thee,  but  turn  not  thou  to  them  "  (Jer. 
XV.  19).  Thus  the  essence  of  true  prophecy  lies  in 
moral  converse  with  Jehovah.  It  is  in  this  moral  con- 
verse that  the  prophet  learns  the  divine  will,  enters  into 
the  secrets  of  Jehovah's  purpose,  and  so  by  declaring 
God's  word  to  Israel  keeps  alive  a  constant  spiritual 
intercourse  between  Jehovah  and  His  people. 

According  to  the  prophets  this  spiritual  intercourse 
is  the  essence  of  religion,  and  the  "  word  of  Jehovah," 
in  the  sense  now  explained,  is  the  characteristic  and 
distinguishing  mark  of  His  grace  to  Israel.  When  the 
word  of  Jehovah  is  withdrawn,  the  nation  is  hopelessly 
undone.  Amos  describes  as  the  climax  of  judgment  on 
tlie  Northern  Kingdom  a  famine  not  of  bread  but  of 
hearing  Jehovah's  word.  Men  shall  run  from  end  to 
end  of  the  land  to  seek  the  word  of  Jehovah,  and  shall 
not  find  it.  In  that  day  the  fair  virgins  and  the  young 
men  shall  faint  for  thirst,  and  the  guilty  people  shall 
fall  to  rise  no  more  (Amos  viii.  11  se^.).  Conversely 
the  hope  of  Judah  in  its  adversity  is  that  "  thine  eyes 
shall  see  thy  teacher,  and  thine  ears  shall  hear  a  word 


LECT.  X.  OF  PROPHECY.  283 

behind  thee  saying,  This  is  the  way,  walk  ye  in  it,  when 
ye  turn  to  the  right  hand  or  the  left "  (Isa.  xxx.  20). 
And  so  the  function  of  the  prophet  cannot  cease  till  the 
days  of  the  new  covenant,  when  Jehovah  shall  write  His 
revelation  in  the  hearts  of  all  His  people,  when  one  man 
"  shall  no  more  teach  another  saying,  Know  Jehovah  : 
for  they  shall  all  know  me  from  the  least  of  them  unto 
the  greatest  of  them,  saith  Jehovah :  for  I  will  forgive 
their  iniquity,  and  remember  their  sin  no  more"  (Jer. 
xxxi.  33  scq}).  When  we  compare  this  passage  with 
Isaiah  vi.,  we  see  that  under  this  new  covenant  the 
prophetic  consecration  is  extended  to  all  Israel,  and  the 
function  of  the  teacher  ceases,  because  all  Israel  shall 
then  stand  in  the  circle  of  Jehovah's  intimates,  and  see 
the  king  in  His  beauty  as  Isaiah  saw  Him  in  prophetic 
vision  (Isa.  xxxiii.  17).  The  same  thought  appears  in 
another  form  in  Joel  ii.  28,  where  it  is  represented  as  a 
feature  in  the  deliverance  of  Israel  that  God's  spirit 
shall  be  poured  on  all  flesh,  and  young  and  old,  freemen 
and  slaves,  shall  prophesy.  But  nowhere  is  the  idea 
more  clear  than  in  the  last  part  of  the  book  of  Isaiah, 
where  the  true  people  of  Jehovah  and  the  prophet  of 
Jehovah  appear  as  identical.  "  Hearken  unto  me,  ye 
that  know  the  right,  the  peo]jle  in  whose  hearts  my  reve- 
lation dwells  ;  fear  ye  not  the  reproach  of  man,  neither 
be  ye  afraid  of  their  revilings.  .  .  .  I  have  put  my  words 
in  thy  mouth,  and  I  have  covered  thee  in  the  shadow  of 
my  hand,  planting  the  heavens  and  laying  the  founda- 
tion of  the  earth,  and  saying  to  Zion,  Thou  art  my 
people"  (Isa.  li.  7,  16). 


284  THE  PROPHET  AND  lect.  x. 

We  see  then  that  the  ideal  of  the  Old  Testament  is 
a  dispensation  in  which  all  are  prophets.  "  Would  that 
all  the  people  of  Jehovah  were  prophets,"  says  Moses 
in  Num.  xi.  29,  "  and  that  Jehovah  would  put  his  spirit 
upon  them."  If  prophecy  were  merely  an  institution 
for  the  prediction  of  future  events,  this  wish  would  be 
futile.  But  the  essential  grace  of  the  prophet  is  a  heart 
purged  of  sin,  and  entering  with  boldness  into  the  inner 
circle  of  fellowship  with  Jehovah.  The  spirit  of  Jeho- 
vah, which  rests  on  the  prophet,  is  not  merely  a  spirit 
of  wisdom  and  understanding,  a  spirit  of  counsel  and 
might,  but  a  spirit  to  know  and  fear  the  Lord  (Isa.  xi. 
2).  The  knowledge  and  fear  of  Jehovah  is  the  sum  of 
all  prophetic  wisdom,  but  also  of  all  religion ;  and  the 
Old  Testament  spirit  of  prophecy  is  the  forerunner  of 
the  New  Testament  spirit  of  sanctifi cation.  That  this 
spirit,  in  the  Old  Covenant,  rests  not  upon  all  the  faithful 
but  only  upon  chosen  organs  of  revelation  corresponds 
to  the  limitations  of  the  dispensation,  in  which  the 
primary  subject  of  religion  is.  not  the  individual  but  the 
nation,  so  that  Israel's  personal  converse  with  Jehovah 
can  be  adequately  maintained,  like  other  national  func- 
tions, through  the  medium  of  certain  chosen  and  repre- 
sentative persons.  The  prophet  is  thus  a  mediator,  who 
not  only  brings  God's  word  to  the  people  but  conversely 
makes  intercession  for  the  people  with  God  (Isa.  xxxvii. 
4;  Jer.  xiv.  11,  xv.  1,  etc.). 

The  account  of  prophecy  given  by  the  prophets  them- 
selves involves,  you  perceive,  a  whole  theory  of  religion, 


LECT.  X.  THE  PRIEST.  285 

pointing  in  the  most  necessary  way  to  a  New  Testament 
fulfilment.  But  the  theory  moves  in  an  altogether 
different  plane  from  the  Levitical  ordinances,  and  in  no 
sense  can  it  be  viewed  as  a  spiritual  commentary  on 
them.  For  under  the  Levitical  system  Jehovah's  grace 
is  conveyed  to  Israel  through  the  priest;  according  to 
the  prophets  it  comes  in  the  prophetic  word.  The 
systems  are  not  identical;  but  may  they  at  least  be 
regarded  as  mutually  supplementary  ? 

In  their  origin  priest  and  prophet  are  doubtless 
closely  connected  ideas.  Moses  is  not  only  a  prophet 
but  a  priest  (Deut.  xviii.  15  ;  Hos.  xii.  13 ;  Deut.  xxxiii. 
8  ;  Psalm  xcix.  6).  Samuel  also  unites  both  functions ; 
and  there  is  a  priestly  as  well  as  a  prophetic  oracle.  In 
early  times  the  sacred  lot  of  the  priest  appears  to  have 
been  more  looked  to  than  the  prophetic  word.  David 
ceases  to  consult  Gad  when  Abiathar  joins  liim  with  the 
ephod.  (Compare  1  Sam.  xiv.  18,  xxii.  10,  xxiii.  9, 
xxviii.  6  with  xxii  5.)  Indeed,  so  long  as  sacrificial  acts 
were  freely  performed  by  laymen,  the  chief  distinction 
of  a  priest  doubtless  lay  in  his  qualification  to  give  an 
oracle.  The  word  which  in  Hebrew  means  priest  is  in 
old  Arabic  the  term  for  a  soothsayer  (Jcohcn,  kdhin),  and 
in  this,  as  in  other  points,  the  popular  religion  of  Israel 
was  closely  modelled  on  the  forms  of  Semitic  heathenism, 
as  we  see  from  the  oracle  in  the  shrine  of  Micah  (Jud. 
xviii.  5.  Comp.  1  Sam.  vi.  2  ;  2  Kings  x.  19).^^^  Tlie 
official  prophets  of  Judah  appear  to  have  been  connected 
with  the  priesthood  and  the  sanctuary  until  the  close  of  the 


286  THE  PRIESTS  AND  lect.  x. 

kingdom  (Isa.  xxviii.  7;  Jer.  xxiii.  11,  xxvi.  11;  comp. 
Hosea  iv.  5).  They  were  in  fact  part  of  the  establish- 
ment of  the  temple  subject  to  priestly  discipline  (Jer. 
xxix.  26,  XX.  1  seq^).  They  played  into  the  priests' 
hands  (Jer.  v.  31),  had  a  special  interest  in  the  affairs  of 
worship  (Jer.  xxvii.  16;  swpra,  p.  114  se^.),  and  appear 
in  all  their  conflicts  with  Jeremiah  as  the  partisans  of 
the  theory  that  Jehovah's  help  is  absolutely  secured  by 
the  temple  and  its  services. 

But  the  prophecy  which  thus  co-operates  with  the 
priests  is  not  spiritual  prophecy.  It  is  a  kind  of 
prophecy  which  the  Old  Testament  calls  divination, 
which  traffics  in  dreams  in  place  of  Jehovah's  word 
(Jer.  xxiii.  28),  and  which,  like  heathen  divination, 
presents  features  akin  to  insanity  that  require  to  be  re- 
pressed by  physical  constraint  (Jer.  xxix.  26).  Spiritual 
I  prophecy,  in  the  hands  of  Amos,  Isaiah,  and  their 
successors,  has  no  such  alliance  with  the  sanctuary  and 
its  ritual.  It  develops  and  enforces  its  own  doctrine  of 
the  intercourse  of  Jehovah  with  Israel,  and  the  conditions 
of  His  grace,  without  assigning  the  slightest  value  to 
priests  and  sacrifices.  The  sum  of  religion,  according  to 
the  prophets,  is  to  know  Jehovah,  and  obey  His  precepts. 
Under  the  system  of  the  law  enforced  from  the  days  of 
Ezra  onwards  an  important  part  of  these  precepts  are 
ritual.  Malachi,  prophesying  in  or  after  the  days  of 
Ezra,  accepts  this  position  as  the  basis  of  his  prophetic 
exhortations.  The  first  proof  of  Israel's  sin  is  to  him 
neglect  of  the  sacrificial  ritual.     The  language  of  the 


LECT.  X.  THE  PROPHETS.  287 


older  prophets  up  to  Jeremiah  is  quite  different.  "  What 
are  your  many  sacrifices  to  me  ?  saith  Jehovah :  I 
delight  not  in  the  blood  of  bullocks,  and  lambs,  and  he- 
goats.  When  ye  come  to  see  my  face,  who  hath  asked 
this  at  your  hands,  to  tread  my  courts  ?  Bring  no  more 
vain  oblations  .  .  .  my  soul  hateth  your  new  moons 
and  your  feasts ;  they  are  a  burden  upon  me ;  I  am 
weary  to  bear  them"  (Isa.  i.  11  scq^.  "  I  hate,  I  de- 
spise your  feast  days,  and  I  will  not  take  pleasure  in 
your  solemn  assemblies.  Take  away  from  me  the  noise 
of  thy  songs,  and  let  me  not  hear  the  melody  of  thy 
viols.  But  let  justice  flow  as  waters,  and  righteousness 
like  a  perennial  stream  "  (Amos  v.  21  seq.).  It  is  some- 
times argued  that  such  passages  mean  only  that  Jehovah 
wiU  not  accept  the  sacrifice  of  the  wicked,  and  that  they 
are  quite  consistent  with  a  belief  that  sacrifice  and  ritual 
are  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  true  religion.  But 
tliere  are  other  texts  which  absolutely  exclude  such  a 
view.  Sacrifice  is  not  necessary  to  acceptable  religion. 
Amos  proves  God's  indifference  to  ritual  by  reminding 
the  people  that  they  offered  no  sacrifice  and  offerings  to 
Him  in  the  wilderness  during  those  forty  years  of 
wandering  which  he  elsewhere  cites  as  a  special  proof 
of  Jehovah's  covenant  grace  (Amos  ii.  10,  v.  25).^'^ 
Micah  declares  that  Jehovah  does  not  require  sacrifice ; 
He  asks  nothing  of  His  people,  but  "to  do  justly,  and  love 
mercy,  and  walk  humbly  with  their  God  "  (Micah  vi.  8). 
And  Jeremiah  vii  21  seq.  says  in  express  words,  "  Put 
your  burnt  offerings  to  your  sacrifices  and  eat  flesh.     For 


288  RELIGION  OF  lect.  x. 

I  spake  not  to  your  fathers  and  gave  them  no  command 
in  the  day  that  I  brought  them  out  of  Egypt  concerning 
burnt  offerings  or  sacrifices.  But  this  thing  commanded 
I  them,  saying,  Obey  my  voice,  and  I  will  be  your  God, 
and  ye  shall  be  my  people,  etc."  (Compare  Isa.  xliii.  23 
seq?)  The  position  here  laid  down  is  perfectly  clear. 
When  the  prophets  positively  condemn  the  worship  of 
their  contemporaries,  they  do  so  because  it  is  associated 
with  immorality,  because  by  it  Israel  hopes  to  gain  God's 
favour  without  moral  obedience.  This  does  not  prove 
that  they  have  any  objection  to  sacrifice  and  ritual  in 
the  abstract.  But  they  deny  that  these  things  are 
of  positive  divine  institution,  or  have  any  part  in 
the  scheme  on  which  Jehovah's  grace  is  administered  in 
Israel.  Jehovah,  they  say,  has  not  enjoined  sacrifice. 
This  does  not  imply  that  He  has  never  accepted  sacri- 
fice, or  that  ritual  service  is  absolutely  wrong.  But  it  is 
at  best  mere  form,  which  does  not  purchase  any  favour 
from  Jehovah,  and  might  be  given  up  without  offence. 
It  is  impossible  to  give  a  flatter  contradiction  to  the 
traditional  theory  that  the  Levitical  system  was  enacted 
in  the  wilderness.  The  theology  of  the  prophets  before 
Ezekiel  has  no  place  for  the  system  of  priestly  sacrifice 
and  ritual. 

AU  this  is  so  clear  that  it  seems  impossible  to  mis- 
understand it.  Yet  the  position  of  the  prophets  is  not 
only  habitually  explained  away  by  those  who  are 
determined  at  any  cost  to  maintain  the  traditional  view 
of  the  Pentateuch,  but  is  still  more  seriously  misunder- 


LECT.  X.  THE  PROPHETS.  289 

stood  by  a  current  rationalism  not  altogether  confined 
to  those  who,  on  principle,  deny  the  reality  of  positive 
revelation.  It  is  a  widespread  opinion  that  the  prophets 
are  the  advocates  of  natural  religion,  and  that  this  is  the 
reason  of  their  indifference  to  a  religion  of  ordinances 
and  ritual.  On  the  naturalistic  theory  of  religion,  ethical 
monotheism  is  the  natural  belief  of  mankind,  not,  indeed, 
attained  at  once  in  all  races,  but  worked  out  for  them- 
selves by  the  great  thinkers  of  humanity,  continually 
reflecting  on  the  ordinary  phenomena  of  life  and  history. 
It  is  held  that  natural  religion  is  the  only  true  religion, 
that  the  proof  of  its  truth  lay  open  to  aU  men  in  all 
countries,  and  that  Christianity  itself,  so  far  as  it  is  true, 
is  merely  the  historical  development,  in  one  part  of  the 
world,  of  those  ideas  of  ethical  monotheism  wliich  other 
nations  than  Israel  might  have  worked  out  equally  well 
on  the  basis  of  their  own  experience  and  reflection. 
From  this  point  of  view  the  prophets  are  regarded  as 
advanced  thinkers,  who  had  not  yet  thrown  aside  all 
superstition,  who  were  hampered  by  a  belief  in  miracle 
and  special  revelation,  but  whose  teaching  has  abiding 
value  only  in  proportion  as  it  reduced  these  elements  to 
a  subordinate  place  and  struck  out  new  ideas  essentially 
independent  of  them.  The  prophets,  we  are  told, 
believed  themselves  to  be  inspired.  But  their  true 
inspiration  was  only  profound  thinking.  They  were 
inspired  as  all  great  poetic  and  religious  minds  are 
inspired ;  and  when  they  say  that  God  has  told  them 
certain  things  as  to  His  nature  and  attributes,  this  only 


290  THE  INSPIRATION  lect.  x. 

means  that  they  have  reached  a  profound  conviction  of 
spiritual  truths  concealed  from  their  less  intelligent 
contemporaries.  The  permanent  truths  of  religion  are 
those  which  spring  up  in  the  breast  without  external 
revelation  or  traditional  teaching.  The  prophets  had 
grasped  these  truths  with  great  force,  and  so  they  were 
indifferent  to  the  positive  forms  which  made  up  the 
religion  of  the  mass  of  their  nation.  This  theory  has 
had  an  influence  extending  far  beyond  the  circle  of  those 
who  deliberately  accept  it  in  its  whole  compass.  Even 
popular  theology  is  not  indisposed  to  solve  the  apparent 
contradiction  between  the  Prophets  and  the  Pentateuch, 
by  saying  that  the  former  could  afford  to  overlook  the 
.  positive  elements  of  Israel's  religion,  because  their  hearts 
were  filled  with  spiritual  truths  belonging  to  another 
sphere. 

But  the  prophets  themselves  put  the  case  in  a  very 
different  light.  According  to  them  it  is  their  religion 
which  is  positive,  and  the  popular  worship  which  is 
\  largely  traditional  and  of  human  growth.  That  Jehovah 
is  the  Judge,  the  Lawgiver,  the  King  of  Israel,  is  a  pro- 
position which  they  accept  in  the  most  literal  sense. 
Jehovah's  word  and  thoughts  are  as  distinct  from  their 
own  words  and  thoughts  as  those  of  another  human 
person.  The  mark  of  a  false  prophet  is  that  he  speaks 
"  the  vision  of  his  own  heart,  not  from  Jehovah's  mouth  " 
(Jer.  xxiii.  16).  The  word  of  Jehovah,  the  command- 
ments and  revelations  of  Jehovah,  are  given  to  them 
niter n ally,  but  are  not  therefore  identical  with  their 


LECT.  X.  OF  THE  PROPHETS.  291 


own  reflections.  They  have  an  external  authority,  the 
authority  of  Him  who  is  the  King  and  Master  of  Israel. 
This  is  not  the  place  for  a  theory  of  revelation.  But  it 
is  well  to  observe,  as  a  matter  of  plain  fact,  that  the 
inspiration  of  the  prophets  presents  phenomena  quite 
distinct  from  those  of  any  other  religion.  In  the  crasser 
forms  of  religion  the  supernatural  character  of  an  oracle 
is  held  to  be  proved  by  the  absence  of  self-conscious 
thought.  The  dream,  the  ecstatic  vision,  the  frenzy  of 
the  Pythoness,  seem  divine  because  they  are  not  intelli- 
gent. But  these  things  are  divination,  not  prophecy. 
Jeremiah  draws  an  express  contrast  between  dreams 
and  the  word  of  Jehovah  (Jer.  xxiii.  25-28).  And  the 
visions  of  the  prophets,  which  were  certainly  rare,  and 
by  no  means  the  standard  form  of  revelation,  are  dis- 
tinguished by  the  fact  that  the  seer  retains  his  con- 
sciousness, his  moral  judgment,  his  power  of  thinking 
(Isa.  vi.).  On  the  other  hand,  the  assertion  so  often 
made  that  the  prophets  identify  the  word  of  Jehovah 
with  their  own  highest  thoughts,  just  as  tlie  Vedic  poets 
do,  ignores  an  essential  difference  between  the  two  cases. 
The  prophets  drew  a  sharp  distinction  between  their 
own  word  and  God's  word,  which  these  poets  never  do. 
Nor  is  spiritual  prophecy,  as  other  scholars  liold,  a 
natural  product,  of  Semitic  religion.  Semitic  religion, 
like  other  religions,  naturally  produces  diviners;  but 
even  Mohammed  had  no  criterion  apart  from  his 
hysterical  fits  to  distinguish  his  own  thoughts  from  the 
revelations  of  Allah.  ^^^ 


292  MEANING  OF  lect.  x. 

According  to  tlie  prophets,  all  true  knowledge  of 
God  is  readied,  not  by  human  reflection,  but  by  the 
instruction  of  Jehovah  Himself.  Keligion  is  to  know 
Jehovah,  to  fear  Him  and  obey  His  commandments,  as 
one  knows,  fears,  and  obeys  a  father  and  a  king.  The 
relations  of  Jehovah  to  Israel  are  of  a  x>erfectly  matter- 
of-fact  kind.  They  rest  on  the  historical  fact  that  He 
chose  the  people  of  Israel,  brought  them  up  from  Egypt, 
settled  them  in  Canaan,  and  has  ever  since  been  present 
in  the  nation,  issuing  comD^ands  for  its  behaviour  in 
every  concern  of  national  life.  In  every  point  of  con- 
duct Israel  is  referred,  not  to  its  own  moral  reflections 
and  political  wisdom,  but  to  the  Word  of  Jehovah. 

According  to  the  traditional  view,  the  Word  of 
Jehovah  is  embodied  in  a  book-revelation.  The  Torah, 
instruction,  or,  as  we  should  say,  revelation  of  God, 
is  a  written  volume  deposited  with  the  priests,  which 
gives  rules  for  all  national  and  personal  conduct,  and 
also  provides  the  proper  means  for  regaining  God's 
favour  when  it  has  been  lost  through  sin.  But  to  the 
prophets  the  Torah  has  a  very  different  meaning. 

The  prophets  did  not  invent  the  word  Torah.  It  is 
a  technical  term  of  the  current  traditional  religion.  A 
Torah  is  any  decision  or  instruction  on  matters  of  law 
and  conduct  given  by  a  sacred  authority.  Thus  m&reh, 
or  giver  of  Torah,  may  mean  a  soothsayer.  The  oak  of 
the  Torah-giver  (Gen.  xii.  6)  is  identical  with  the  sooth- 
sayers' oak  (Jud.  ix.  37).  You  remember,  in  illustration 
of  this  name,  that  Deborah  gave  her  prophetic  judgments 


LECT.  X.  THE  WORD  TORAH.  293 

under  "  the  palm-tree  of  Deborah  "  between  Eamah  and 
Bethel.  More  frequent  are  allusions  to  the  Torah  of 
the  priests,  which  in  like  manner  denotes,  not  a  book 
which  they  had  in  their  hands,  but  the  sacred  decisions 
given,  by  the  priestly  oracle  or  otherwise,  in  the  sanc- 
tuary, which  in  early  Israel  was  the  seat  of  divine  judg- 
ment (Exod.  xviii.  19,  xxi  6,  where  for  tlie  judges  read 
God;  1  Sam.  ii.  25).  Thus  in  Deut.  xxxiii.  10  the  busi- 
ness of  the  Levites  is  to  give  Torah  to  Israel  and  to  offer 
sacrifice  to  God.  In  Jer.  xviii.  18  the  people  give  as  a 
ground  of  their  security  against  the  evils  predicted  by 
Jeremiah  that  Torah  shall  not  perish  from  the  priest, 
counsel  from  the  wise,  and  the  word  from  the  prophet. 
The  priests  are  "  they  that  handle  the  Torah  "  (Jer.  ii. 
8).  Micah  complains  that  the  priests  give  Torahs  or 
legal  decisions  for  hire  (Micah  iii.  11).  In  these  pass- 
ages the  Torah  is  not  a  book  but  an  oral  decision,  and 
this  the  grammatical  form  of  the  word,  as  an  infinitive 
of  the  verb  "  to  give  a  decision  or  instruction,"  shows  to 
be  the  primitive  sense. 

We  have  seen  how  spiritual  prophecy  branched  off 
and  separated  itself  from  the  popular  prophecy  which 
remained  connected  with  the  sanctuary  and  the  priests. 
In  doing  so  it  carried  its  own  spiritual  Torah  with  it. 
When  God  bids  Isaiah  "  bind  up  the  testimony,  seal 
the  Torah  among  my  disciples,"  the  reference  is  to  the 
revelation  just  given  to  the  prophet  himself  (Isa.  viii. 
16).  To  this  Torah  and  testimony,  and  not  to  wizards 
and  consulters  of  the  dead,  Israel's  appeal  for  Divine 


294  SPOKEN  AND  lect.  x. 

guidance  lies  (verse  20).  The  Torali  is  the  living  pro- 
phetic word.  "  Hear  the  word  of  Jehovah,"  and  "  Give 
ear  to  the  Torah  of  our  God,"  are  parallel  injunctions 
by  which  the  prophet  demands  attention  to  his  divine 
message  (Isa.  i.  10).  The  Torah  is  not  yet  a  finished 
and  complete  system,  booked  and  reduced  to  a  code, 
but  a  living  word  in  the  mouth  of  the  prophets.  In 
the  latter  days  the  proof  that  Jehovah  is  King  in  Zion, 
exalting  His  chosen  hill  above  aU  the  mountains  of  the 
earth,  will  still  be  that  Torah  proceeds  from  Zion  and 
the  word  of  Jehovah  from  Jerusalem,  so  that  all 
nations  come  thither  for  judgment,  and  Jehovah's 
word  establishes  peace  among  hostile  peoples  (Isa.  ii.  2 
seq^.;  Micah  v.  1  seq?).  It  is  this  continual  living  in- 
struction of  Jehovah  present  with  His  people  which  the 
prophets,  as  we  have  already  seen,  regard  as  essential 
to  the  welfare  of  Israel  No  written  book  would  satisfy 
the  thirst  for  God's  Word  of  which  Amos  speaks.  The 
only  thing  that  can  supersede  the  Torah  of  the  prophets 
is  the  Torah  written  in  every  heart  and  spoken  by  every 
lip.  "  This  is  my  covenant  with  them,  saith  Jehovah  : 
my  spirit  that  is  upon  thee,  and  my  words  which  I 
have  put  in  thy  mouth  shall  not  depart  out  of  thy 
mouth,  nor  out  of  the  mouth  of  thy  seed,  nor  out  of  the 
mouth  of  thy  seed's  seed,  saith  Jehovah,  from  hence- 
forth and  for  ever  "  (Isa.  lix.  21).  God's  Word,  not  in 
a  book  but  in  the  heart  and  mouth  of  His  servants,  is 
the  ultimate  ideal  as  well  as  the  first  postulate  of 
prophetic  theology. 


LECT.  X.  WRITTEN  TORAH.  295 

How  then  did  tins  revelation,  which  is  essentially 
living  speech,  pass  into  the  form  of  a  written  word  such 
as  we  still  possess  in  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  ? 
To  answer  this  question  as  the  prophets  themselves 
would  do,  we  must  remember  that  among  primitive 
nations,  and  indeed  among  Eastern  nations  to  this  day, 
books  are  not  the  foundation  of  sound  knowledge.  The 
ideal  of  instruction  is  oral  teaching,  and  the  worthiest 
shrine  of  truths  that  must  not  die  is  the  memory  and 
heart  of  a  faithful  disciple.  The  ideal  state  of  things  is 
that  in  which  the  Torah  is  written  in  Israel's  heart,  and 
all  his  children  are  disciples  of  Jehovah  (Isa.  liv.  13). 
But  this  ideal  was  far  from  the  actual  reality,  and  so  in 
religion,  as  in  other  branches  of  knowledge,  the  written 
roll  to  which  truth  is  committed  supplies  the  lack  of 
faithful  disciples.  This  comes  out  quite  clearly  in  the 
case  of  the  prophetic  books.  The  prophets  write  the 
words  which  their  contemporaries  refuse  to  hear.  So 
Isaiah  seals  his  revelation  among  the  disciples  of 
Jehovah ;  that  is,  he  takes  them  as  witnesses  to  a 
document  which  is,  as  it  were,  a  formal  testimony 
against  Israel  (Isa.  viii.  1  seq^.^  16).  So  Jeremiah,  after 
three-and-twenty  years  spent  in  speaking  to  a  rebellious 
people,  writes  down  his  prophecies  that  they  may  have 
another  opportunity  to  hear  and  repent  (Jer.  xxxvi.). 
Jehovah's  Word  has  a  scope  that  reaches  beyond  the 
immediate  occasion,  and  a  living  force  which  prevents 
it  from  returning  to  Him  without  effect  ;  and  if  it  is 
not  at  onae  taken  up  into  the  hearts  c-f  the  people,  it 


296  WRITTEN  PROPHECY.  lect.  x. 

must  be  set  in  writing  for  future  use  and  for  a  testi- 
mony in  time  to  come.  Thus  the  prophets  become 
authors,  and  they  and  their  disciples  are  students  of 
written  revelation.  One  passage  of  an  older  seer  is 
cited  as  the  text  of  further  prophetic  discourse  both  in 
Isaiah  ii.  and  in  Micah  v. ;  and  the  prophecy  against 
Moab  (Isa.  xv.,  xvi.)  is  followed  by  the  note  of  a  later 
prophet.  "  This  is  the  word  which  Jehovah  spake 
against  Moab  long  ago.  But  now  Jehovah  speaks,  say- 
ing, Within  three  short  years  the  glory  of  Moab  shall  be 
abased  "  (Isa.  xvi.  13,  14).  Thus  we  see  how  the  begin- 
nings of  prophetic  literature  in  the  eighth  century  coin- 
cide with  the  great  breach  between  spiritual  prophecy 
and  the  popular  religion.  Elisha  had  no  need  to  write, 
for  his  word  bore  immediate  fruit  in  the  overthrow  of 
the  house  of  Omri  and  the  destruction  of  the  worship- 
pers of  Baal.  The  old  prophecy  left  its  record  in  social 
and  political  successes.  The  new  prophecy  that  begins 
with  Amos  spoke  to  a  people  that  would  not  hear,  and 
looked  to  no  immediate  success,  but  only  to  a  renova- 
tion of  the  remnant  of  Israel  to  foUow  on  a  completed 
work  of  judgment.  When  the  people  forbid  the  pro- 
phets to  preach,  they  begin  perforce  to  write  (Amos  ii. 
12,  vii.  12,  13 ;  Micah  ii.  6 ;  Jer.  xxxvi.  5  seq)). 

But,  though  the  properly  prophetic  literature  begins 
in  the  eighth  century  B.C.,  do  not  the  prophets,  it  may  be 
asked,  base  their  teaching  on  an  earlier  written  revela- 
tion of  another  kind?  They  certainly  hold  that  the 
religion  of  Israel  is  as  old  as  the  Exodus.     They  speak 


LECT.  X.  MOSES.  297 

of  Moses.  "By  a  prophet,"  says  Hosea,  "Jehovah  brought 
Israel  out  of  Egypt."  "  I  brought  thee  up  out  of  the 
land  of  Egypt,  and  redeemed  thee  out  of  the  house  of 
bondage,"  says  Micah ;  "  and  I  sent  before  thee  Moses, 
Aaron,  and  Miriam."  Do  not  these  references  pre- 
suppose the  written  law  of  Moses  ?  This  question  re- 
quires careful  consideration. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  prophets  regard  them- 
selves as  successors  of  Moses.  He  is,  as  we  see  from 
Hosea,  the  first  prophet  of  Israel.  But  the  prophets 
of  the  eighth  century  never  speak  of  a  written  law 
fff  Moses.  The  only  passage  which  has  been  taken  to 
do  so  is  Hosea  viii.  12.  And  here  the  grammatical 
translation  is,  "  Though  I  wrote  to  him  my  Torah  in  ten 
thousand  precepts,  they  would  be  esteemed  as  a  strange 
thing."  It  is  simple  matter  of  fact  that  the  prophets 
do  not  refer  to  a  written  Torah  as  the  basis  of  their 
teaching,  and  we  have  seen  that  they  absolutely  deny 
the  existence  of  a  binding  ritual  law.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  clear  that  the  Torah  is  not  a  new  thing  in  the 
eighth  century.  The  false  religion  of  the  mass  of  the 
nation  is  always  described  as  a  corruption  of  truths 
which  Israel  ought  to  know.  "  Thou  hast  forgotten  the 
Torah  of  thy  God,"  says  Hosea  to  the  priests  (Hos.  iv.  6). 
It  cannot  fairly  be  doubted  that  the  Torah  whicli  the 
priests  have  forgotten  is  Mosaic  Torah.  For  the  pro- 
phets do  not  acknowledge  the  priests  as  organs  of  reve- 
lation. Their  knowledge  was  essentially  traditional. 
Such  traditions  are  based  on  old-established  law,  and 


298  MOSAIC  LECT.  x. 

they  themselves  undoubtedly  referred  then-  wisdom  to 
Moses,  who,  either  directly  or  through  Aaron, — for  our 
argument  it  matters  not  which, — is  the  father  of  the 
priests  as  well  as  the  father  of  the  prophets  (Deut. 
xxxiii.  4,  8  seq. ;  1  Sam.  ii.  27  seq).  That  this  should  be 
so  lies  in  the  nature  of  the  case.  Jehovah  as  King  of 
Israel  must  from  the  first  have  given  permanent  laws 
as  well  as  precepts  for  immediate  use.  What  is  quite 
certain  is  that,  according  to  the  prophets,  the  Torah  of 
Moses  did  not  embrace  a  law  of  ritual.  Worship  by 
sacrifice,  and  all  that  belongs  to  it,  is  no  part  of  the 
divine  Torah  to  Israel.  It  forms,  if  you  will,  part  df 
natural  religion,  which  other  nations  share  with  Israel, 
and  which  is  no  feature  in  the  distinctive  precepts  given 
at  the  Exodus.  There  is  no  doubt  that  this  view  is  in 
accordance  with  the  Bible  history,  and  with  what  we 
know  from  other  sources.  Jacob  is  represented  as  pay- 
ing tithes;  all  the  patriarchs  build  altars  and  do 
sacrifice;  the  law  of  blood  is  as  old  as  Noah  ;  the  con- 
secration of  firstlings  is  known  to  the  Arabs;  the 
autumn  feast  of  the  vintage  is  Canaanite  as  well  as 
Hebrew ;  and  these  are  but  examples  which  might  be 
largely  multiplied. 

The  true  distinction  of  Israel's  religion  lies  in  the 
character  of  the  Deity  who  has  made  Himself  personally 
known  to  His  people,  and  demands  of  them  a  life  con- 
formed to  His  spiritual  character  as  a  righteous  and  for- 
giving God.  The  difference  between  Jehovah  and  the 
gods  of  the  nations  is  that  He  does  not  require  sacrifice, 


LECT.  X.  TO  RAH.  299 

but  only  to  do  justly,  and  love  mercy,  and  walk  luiml)ly 
with  God.  This  standpoint  is  not  confined  to  the 
prophetic  books ;  it  is  the  standpoint  of  the  ten  com- 
mandments, which  contain  no  precept  of  positive 
worship.  But  according  to  many  testimonies  of  the  pre- 
exilic  books,  it  is  the  ten  commandments,  the  laws 
written  on  the  two  tables  of  stone,  that  are  Jehovah's 
covenant  with  Israel.  In  1  Kings  viii.  9,  21  these 
tables  are  identified  with  the  covenant  deposited  in  the 
sanctuary.  And  with  this  the  book  of  Deuteronomy 
agrees  (Deut.  v.  2,  22).  Whatever  is  more  than  the 
words  spoken  at  Horeb  is  not  strictly  covenant,  but 
prophetic  teaching,  continual  divine  guidance  addressed 
to  those  needs  which  in  heathen  nations  are  met  by 
divination,  but  which  in  Israel  are  supplied  by  the 
personal  word  of  the  revealing  God  ministered  through 
a  succession  of  prophets  (Deut.  xviii.  9  seci).  Even  Ezra 
(ix.  11)  still  speaks  of  the  law  which  forbids  intermar- 
riage with  the  people  of  Canaan  as  an  ordinance  of  the 
prophets  (plural).  Yet  this  is  now  read  as  a  Penta- 
teuchal  law  (Deut.  vii.). 

To  understand  this  view,  we  must  remember  that 
among  the  pure  Semites  even  at  the  present  day  the 
sphere  of  legislation  is  far  narrower  than  in  our  more 
complicated  society.  Ordinary  affairs  of  life  are  always 
regulated  by  consuetudinary  law,  preserved  without 
writing  or  the  need  for  trained  judges,  in  the  memory 
and  practice  of  the  family  and  the  tribe.  It  is  only  in 
cases  of  difficulty  that  an  appeal  is  taken  to  the  judge — 


300  PROPHETIC  DOCTRINE  lect.  x. 

the  Kadhi  of  tlie  Arabs.  It  was  not  otherwise  in  the 
days  of  Moses.  It  was  only  hard  matters  that  were 
brought  to  him,  and  reierred  by  him,  not  to  a  fixed  code 
of  law,  but  to  Divine  decision  (Exod.  xviii.  19-26), 
which  formed  a  precedent  for  future  use.  Of  tliis  state 
of  things  the  condition  of  affairs  under  the  Judges  is  the 
natural  sequel.  But  Moses  did  more  than  any  Kadhi. 
He  was  a  prophet  as  well  as  a  judge.  As  such  he 
founded  in  Israel  the  great  principles  of  the  moral 
religion  of  the  righteous  Jehovah.  All  else  was  but  a 
development  of  the  fundamental  revelation  of  Horeb, 
and  from  the  standpoint  of  prophetic  religion  it  is  not 
of  importance  whether  these  developments  were  given 
directly  by  Moses,  or  only  by  the  prophets  his  succes- 
sors. But  all  true  Torah  must  move  in  the  lines  of  the 
original  covenant.  The  standard  of  the  prophets  is  the 
moral  law,  and  because  the  priests  had  forgotten  this 
they  declare  them  to  have  forgotten  the  law,  however 
copious  their  Torah,  and  however  great  their  interest  in 
details  ol  ritual.  Forgotten  or  perverted  by  the  priests 
(Hos.  iv.  6  ;  Zeph.  iii.  4),  the  true  Torah  of  Jehovah  is 
preserved  by  the  prophets.  But  the  prophets  before 
Ezekiel  have  no  concern  in  the  law  of  ritual.  They 
make  no  effort  to  recall  the  priests  to  their  duty  in  this 
respect,  except  in  the  negative  sense  of  condemning  such 
elements  in  the  popular  worship  as  are  inconsistent  with 
the  spiritual  attributes  of  Jehovah. 

From  the  ordinary  presuppositions  with  which  we 
are  accustomed  to  approach  the  Old  Testament,  there  is 


LECT.  X.  OF  FORGIVENESS.  301 

one  point  in  this  position  of  the  prophets  which  still 
creates  a  difiiculty.  If  it  is  true  that  they  exclude  the  ^ 
sacrificial  worship  from  the  positive  elements  of  Israel's 
religion,  what  becomes  of  the  doctrine  of  the  forgive- 
ness of  sins,  which  we  are  accustomed  to  regard  as  mainly 
expressed  in  the  typical  ordinances  of  atonement  ?  It 
is  necessary,  in  conclusion,  to  say  a  word  on  this  head. 
The  point,  I  think,  may  be  put  thus.  When  Micah,  for 
example,  says  that  Jehovah  requires  nothing  of  man  but 
to  do  justly,  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with 
God,  we  are  apt  to  take  this  utterance  as  an  expression 
of  Old  Testament  legalism.  According  to  the  law  of 
works,  these  things  are  of  course  sufficient.  But  sinful 
man,  sinful  Israel,  cannot  perform  them  perfectly.  Is  it 
not  therefore  necessary  for  the  law  to  come  in  with  its 
atonement  to  supply  the  imperfection  of  Israel's  obe- 
dience ?  I  ask  you  to  observe  that  such  a  view  of  the 
prophetic  teaching  is  the  purest  rationalism,  necessarily 
aUied  with  the  false  idea  that  the  prophets  are  advocates 
of  natural  morality.  The  prophetic  theory  of  religion 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  law  of  works.  Religion, 
they  teach,  is  the  personal  fellowship  of  Jehovah  with 
Israel,  in  which  He  shapes  His  people  to  His  own  ends, 
impresses  His  own  likeness  upon  them  by  a  continual 
moral  guidance.  Such  a  religion  cannot  exist  under  a 
bare  law  of  works.  Jehovah  did  not  find  Israel  a  holy 
and  righteous  people ;  He  has  to  make  it  so  by  wise 
discipline  and  loving  guidance,  which  refuses  to  be 
frustrated  by  the  people's  shortcomings  and  sins.  The 
14 


302  PROPHETIC  DOCTRINE  lect.  x. 

continuance  of  Jehovah's  love  in  spite  of  Israel's  trans- 
gressions, which  is  set  forth  with  so  much  force  in  the 
opening  chapters  of  Hosea,  is  the  forgiveness  of  sin. 

Under  the  Old  Testament  the  forgiveness  of  sins  is 
not  an  abstract  doctrine  but  a  thing  of  actual  experience. 
The  proof,  nay  the  substance,  of  forgiveness  is  the  con- 
tinued enjoyment  of  those  practical  marks  of  Jehovah's 
favour  which  are  experienced  in  peaceful  occupation  of 
Canaan  and  deliverance  from  all  trouble.  This  prac- 
tical way  of  estimating  forgiveness  is  common  to  the 
prophets  with  their  contemporaries.  Jehovah's  anger 
is  felt  in  national  calamity,  forgiveness  is  realised  in  the 
removal  of  chastisement.  The  proof  that  Jehovah  is  a 
forgiving  God  is  that  He  does  not  retain  His  anger  for 
ever,  but  turns  and  has  compassion  on  His  people 
(Micah  vii.  18  seq^. ;  Isa.  xii.  1).  There  is  no  meta- 
physic  in  this  conception,  it  simply  accepts  the  analogy 
of  anger  and  forgiveness  in  human  life. 

In  the  popular  religion  the  people  hoped  to  influence 
Jehovah's  disposition  towards  them  by  gifts  and  sacri- 
fices (Micah  vi.  4  seq),  by  outward  tokens  of  penitence. 
It  is  against  this  view  that  the  prophets  set  forth  the 
true  doctrine  of  forgiveness.  Jehovah's  anger  is  not 
caprice  but  a  just  indignation,  a  necessary  side  of  His 
moral  kingship  in  Israel.  He  chastises  to  work  peni- 
tence, and  it  is  only  to  the  penitent  that  He  can  extend 
forgiveness.  By  returning  to  obedience  the  people 
regain  the  marks  of  Jehovah's  love,  and  again  experi- 
ence His  goodness  in  deliverance  from  calamity  and 


LECT.  X.  OF  FORGIVENESS,  303 

happy  possession  of  a  fruitful  land.  According  to  the 
prophets,  this  law  of  chastisement  and  forgiveness  works 
directly,  without  the  intervention  of  any  ritual  sacra- 
ment. Jehovah's  love  is  never  withdrawn  from  His 
people,  even  in  their  deepest  sin  and  in  His  sternest 
chastisements.  "  How  can  I  give  thee  up,  Ephraim  ? 
How  can  I  cast  thee  away,  Israel  ?  My  heart  burns 
within  me,  my  compassion  is  all  kindled.  I  will  not 
execute  the  fierceness  of  my  wrath ;  I  will  not  turn  to 
destroy  thee :  for  I  am  God  and  not  man,  the  Holy  One 
in  the  midst  of  thee"  (Hos.  xi.  8).  This  inalienable 
Divine  love,  the  sovereignty  of  God's  own  redeeming 
purpose,  is  the  ground  of  forgiveness.  "  I,  even  I,  am  he 
that  blotteth  out  thine  iniquity  for  mine  own  sake" 
(Isa.  xliii.  25).  And  so  the  prophets  know,  with  a  cer- 
tainty that  rests  in  the  unchangeable  heart  of  God,  that 
through  all  chastisement,  nay  through  the  ruin  of  the 
state,  the  true  remnant  of  Israel  shall  return  to  Jehovah, 
not  with  sacrifices,  but  with  lips  instead  of  bullocks,  as 
Hosea  puts  it,  sajdng,  Take  away  all  iniquity  and  receive 
us  graciously  (Hos.  xiv.  2).  All  prophetic  prediction  is 
but  the  development  in  many  forms,  and  in  answer  to 
the  needs  of  Israel  in  various  times,  of  this  supreme 
certainty,  that  God's  love  works  triumphantly  in  all  His 
judgments;  that  Israel  once  redeemed  from  Egypt  shall 
again  be  redeemed  not  only  from  bondage  but  from  sin  ; 
that  Jehovah  will  perform  the  truth  to  Jacob,  the  mercy 
to  Abraham,  which  He  sware  to  Israel's  fathers  from  the 
days  of  old  (IVIicah  vii.   20).     Accordingly,  the  texts 


304  PENITENCE  AND  SACRIFICE,        lect.  x. 

which  call  for  obedience  and  not  sacrifice  (Micah  vi. ; 
Jer.  vii.  etc.),  for  humanity  instead  of  outward  tokens 
of  contrition  (Isa.  Iviii.),  come  in  at  the  very  same  point 
with  the  atoning  ordinances  of  the  ritual  law.  They  do 
not  set  forth  the  legal  conditions  of  acceptance  without 
forgiveness,  but  the  requisites  of  forgiveness  itself. 
According  to  the  prophets,  Jehovah  asks  only  a  penitent 
heart  and  desires  no  sacrifice ;  according  to  the  ritual 
law,  He  desires  a  penitent  heart  approaching  Him  in 
certain  sacrificial  sacraments.  The  law  adds  something 
to  the  prophetic  teaching,  something  which  the  prophets 
do  not  know,  and  which,  if  both  are  parts  of  one  system 
of  true  revelation,  was  either  superseded  before  the  pro- 
phets rose,  or  began  only  after  they  had  spoken.  But 
the  ritual  law  was  not  superseded  by  prophecy.  It 
comes  into  full  force  only  at  the  close  of  the  prophetic 
period  in  the  reformation  of  Ezra.  And  so  the  conclu- 
sion is  inevitable  that  the  ritual  element  which  the  law 
adds  to  the  prophetic  doctrine  of  forgiveness  became 
part  of  the  system  of  God's  grace  only  after  the  prophets 
had  spoken.  ^^^ 


LECT.  XI.  THE  PENTATEUCH.  305 


LECTUEE  XL 

THE  PENTATEUCH  :   THE  FIRST  LEGISLATION. 

The  results  of  our  investigation  up  to  this  point  are 
not  critical  but  historical,  and,  if  you  will,  theological. 
The  Hebrews  before  the  Exile  knew  a  twofold  Torah, 
the  Torah  of  the  priests  and  that  of  the  prophets. 
Neither  Torah  corresponds  with  the  present  Pentateuch. 
The  prophets  altogether  deny  to  the  law  of  sacrifice  the 
character  of  positive  revelation  ;  their  attitude  to  ques- 
tions of  ritual  is  the  negative  attitude  of  the  ten  com- 
mandments, content  to  forbid  what  is  inconsistent  with 
the  true  nature  of  Jehovah,  and  for  the  rest  to  leave 
matters  to  their  own  course.  The  priests,  on  the  con- 
trary, have  a  ritual  and  legal  Torah  which  has  a 
recognised  place  in  the  state,  but  neither  in  the  old 
priestly  family  of  Eli  nor  in  the  Jerusalem  priesthood 
of  the  sons  of  Zadok  did  the  rules  and  practice  of  the 
priests  correspond  with  the  finislied  system  of  the 
Pentateuch. 

These  results  have  a  much  larger  interest  than  the 
question  of  the  date  of  the  I'entateuch.  It  is  more 
important  to  understand  the  method  of  God's  grace 
in  Israel  than  to  settle  when  a  particular  book  was 


306  THE  LA  W  lect.  xt. 

written ;  and  we  now  see  that,  whatever  the  age  of  the 
Pentateuch  as  a  written  code,  the  Levitical  system  of 
communion  with  God,  the  Levitical  sacraments  of 
atonement,  were  not  the  forms  under  which  God's 
grace  worked,  and  to  wdiich  His  revelation  accom- 
modated itself,  in  Israel  before  the  Exile. 

The  Levitical  ordinances,  whether  they  existed  before 
the  Exile  or  no,  were  not  yet  God's  word  to  Israel  at 
that  time.  For  God's  word  is  the  expression  of  His 
practical  will.  And  the  history  and  the  prophets  alike 
make  it  clear  that  God's  will  for  Israel's  salvation  took 
quite  another  course. 

The  current  view  of  the  Pentateuch  is  mainly  con- 
cerned to  do  literal  justice  to  the  phrase  **The  Lord 
spake  unto  Moses,  saying  "  thus  and  thus.  But  to  save 
the  literal  "  unto  Moses  "  is  to  sacrifice  the  far  more 
important  words  '*  The  Lord  spake.'*  The  time  when 
these  ritual  ordinances  became  God's  word — that  is, 
became  a  divinely  sanctioned  means  for  checking  the 
rebellion  of  the  Israelites  and  keeping  them  as  close  to 
spiritual  religion  as  their  imperfect  understanding  and 
hard  hearts  permitted — was  subsequent  to  the  work  of 
the  prophets.  As  a  matter  of  historical  fact,  the  Law 
continues  the  work  of  the  prophets,  and  great  part  of  the 
Law  was  not  yet  known  to  the  prophets  as  God's  word. 

The  ritual  law  is,  strictly  speaking,  a  fusion  of 
prophetic  and  priestly  Torah.  Its  object  is  to  provide 
a  scheme  of  worship,  in  the  pre-Christian  sense  of  that 
word,  consistent  with  the  unique  holiness  of  Jehovah, 


LECT.  XI.  OF  MOSES.  307 

and  yet  not  beyond  the  possibility  of  practical  realisa- 
tion in  a  nation  not  yet  ripe  to  enter  into  present 
fruition  of  the  evangelical  predictions  of  the  prophets. 
From  the  time  of  Ezra  downwards  this  object  was  prac- 
tically realised.  But  before  the  Captivity  it  not  only 
was  not  realised,  but  was  not  even  contemplated. 
Ezekiel,  himself  an  exile,  is  the  first  prophet  who  pro- 
poses a  reconstruction  of  ritual  in  conformity  with  the 
spiritual  truths  of  prophecy.  And  he  does  so,  not  like 
Ezra  by  recalling  the  nation  to  the  law  of  Moses,  but 
by  sketching  an  independent  scheme  of  ritual,  which 
unquestionably  had  a  great  influence  on  the  subsequent 
development.  Jeremiah,  like  Ezekiel,  was  a  priest  as 
well  as  a  prophet,  but  there  is  nothing  in  Jeremiah 
w^hich  recognises  the  necessity  for  such  a  scheme  of 
ritual  as  Ezekiel  maps  out. 

When  the  Levitical  law  first  comes  on  the  stage  of 
actual  history  at  the  time  of  Ezra,  it  presents  itself  as 
the  Law  of  Moses.  People  w^ho  have  not  understood 
the  Old  Testament  are  accustomed  to  say,  with  the 
usual  presumption  of  unhistorical  rationalism,  that  this 
is  either  literally  true  or  a  lie.  The  Pentateuch  is 
either  the  literary  work  of  Moses,  or  it  is  a  barefaced 
imposture.  The  reverent  and  thoughtful  student,  who 
knows  the  complicated  difficulties  of  the  problem,  will 
not  willingly  accept  this  statement  of  the  question.  I  f 
w^e  are  tied  up  to  make  a  choice  between  these  two 
alternatives,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  all  the 
historical  evidence  that  has  come  before  us  points  in 


308  MEANING  OF  lect.  xi. 

the  direction  of  the  second.  If  our  present  Pentateuch 
was  written  by  Moses,  it  was  lost  as  completely  as  any 
book  could  be.  The  prophets  know  the  history  of 
Moses  and  the  patriarchs,  they  know  that  Moses  is  the 
founder  of  the  Torah,  but  they  do  not  know  that  com- 
plete system  which  we  have  been  accustomed  to  sup- 
pose his  work.  And  the  priests  of  Shiloh  and  the 
Temple  do  not  know  the  very  parts  of  the  Torah 
which  would  have  done  most  to  raise  their  authority 
and  influence.  At  the  time  of  Josiah  a  book  of  the 
Law  is  found,  but  it  is  still  not  the  whole  Pentateuch, 
for  it  does  not  contain  the  full  Levitical  system.  Prom 
the  death  of  Joshua  to  Ezra  is,  on  the  usual  chronology, 
just  one  thousand  years.  Where  was  the  Pentateuch 
all  this  time,  if  it  was  unknown  to  every  one  of  those 
who  ought  to  have  had  most  interest  in  it  ? 

It  is  plain  that  no  thinlving  man  can  be  asked  to 
accept  the  Pentateuch  as  the  literal  work  of  Moses 
without  some  evidence  to  that  effect.  But  evidence  a 
thousand  years  after  date  is  no  evidence  at  all,  when 
the  intervening  period  bears  unanimous  witness  in  a 
different  sense.  By  insisting  that  the  whole  Pentateuch 
is  one  work  of  Moses  and  all  of  equal  date,  the  tradi- 
tional view  cuts  off  all  possibility  of  proof  that  its 
kernel  is  Mosaic.  Por  it  is  certain  that  Israel,  before 
the  Exile,  did  not  know  all  the  Pentateuch.  Therefore, 
if  the  Pentateuch  is  all  one,  they  did  not  know  any 
part  of  it.  If  we  are  shut  up  to  choose  between  a 
Mosaic   authorship   of  the  whole  five  books  and  the 


LECT.  XI.  MOSAIC  TORAH.  309 

sceptical  opinion  that  the  Pentateuch  is  a  mere  forgery, 
the  sceptics  must  gain  their  case. 

It  is  useless  to  appeal  to  the  doctrine  of  inspiration 
for  help  in  such  a  strait ;  for  all  sound  apologetic 
admits  that  the  proof  that  a  book  is  credible  must  pre- 
cede belief  that  it  is  inspired. 

The  true  way  of  escape  from  the  sceptical  con- 
clusions must  be  sought  in  another  direction.  We 
must  ask  whether  the  facts  of  the  case  do  shut  us  up 
to  the  dangerous  alternative,  so  eagerly  pressed  by  the 
enemies  of  revelation  and  so  naively  accepted  by 
light-hearted  advocates  of  the  traditional  view. 

The  Pentateuch  is  known  as  the  Law  of  Moses  in 
the  age  that  begins  with  Ezra.  What  is  the  sense  which 
the  Jews  themselves,  from  the  age  of  Ezra  downwards, 
attach  to  this  expression  ?  In  one  way  they  certainly 
take  a  false  and  unhistorical  sense  out  of  the  words. 
They  assume  that  the  law  of  ordinances,  or  rather  the 
law  of  works,  moral  and  ceremonial,  was  the  principle 
of  all  Israel's  religion.  They  identify  IMosaism  with 
Pharisaism.  That  is  certainly  an  error,  as  the  History 
and  the  Prophets  prove.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
Jews  are  accustomed  to  use  the  word  Mosaic  quite  in- 
differently of  the  direct  teaching  of  Moses  and  of  pre- 
cepts drawn  from  Mosaic  principles  and  adapted  to  later 
needs.  According  to  a  well-known  passage  in  the  Tal- 
mud, even  the  Prophets  and  the  Hagiograplia  were 
implicitly  given  to  Moses  at  Sinai.  So  far  is  this  idea 
carried  that  the  Torah  is  often  identified  with  the  Deca- 


310  MEANING  OF  lect.  xi. 

logue,  in  which  all  other  parts  of  the  Law  are  involved. 
Thus  the  words  of  Deut.  v.  22,  which  refer  to  the  Deca- 
logue, are  used  as  a  proof  that  the  five  books  of  Moses 
can  never  pass  away/^^  The  beginnings  of  this  way  of 
thought  are  clearly  seen  in  Ezra  ix.  11,  where  a  law  of 
the  Pentateuch  is  cited  as  an  ordinance  of  the  prophets. 
Mosaic  law  is  not  held  to  exclude  post-Mosaic  develop- 
ments. That  the  whole  law  is  the  Law  of  Moses  does 
I  not  necessarily  imply  that  every  precept  was  developed 
in  detail  in  his  days,  but  only  that  the  distinctive  law 
of  Israel  owes  to  him  the  origin  and  principles  in  which 
all  detailed  precepts  are  implicitly  contained.  The 
development  into  explicitness  of  what  Moses  gave  in 
principle  is  the  work  of  continuous  divine  teaching  in 
connection  with  new  historical  situations. 

This  way  of  looking  at  the  Law  of  Moses  is  not  an 
invention  of  modern  critics ;  it  actually  existed  among 
the  Jews.  I  do  not  say  that  they  made  good  use  of  it ; 
on  the  contrary,  in  the  period  of  the  Scribes,  it  led  to  a 
great  overgrowth  of  traditions,  which  almost  buried  the 
written  word.  But  the  principle  is  older  than  its  abuse, 
and  it  seems  to  offer  a  key  for  the  solution  of  the  serious 
difficulties  in  which  we  are  involved  by  the  apparent 
contradictions  between  the  Pentateuch  on  the  one  hand 
and  the  historical  books  and  the  Prophets  on  the  other. 

If  the  word  Mosaic  was  sometimes  understood  as 
meaning  no  more  than  Mosaic  in  principle,  it  is  easy  to 
see  how  the  fusion  of  priestly  and  prophetic  Torah  in 
our  present  Pentateuch  may  be  called  Mosaic,  though 


LECT.  XI.  MOSAIC  TO  RAH.  311 

many  things  in  its  system  were  unknown  to  the  history 
and  the  prophets  before  the  Exile.  For  Moses  was 
priest  as  well  as  prophet,  and  both  priests  and 
prophets  referred  the  origin  of  their  Torah  to  him.  In 
the  age  of  the  prophetic  writings  the  two  Torahs  had 
fallen  apart.  The  prophets  do  not  acknowledge  the 
priestly  ordinances  of  their  day  as  a  part  of  Jehovah's 
commandments  to  IsraeL  The  priests,  they  say,  have 
forgotten  or  perverted  the  Torah.  To  reconcile  the  pro- 
phets and  the  priesthood,  to  re-establish  conformity 
between  the  practice  of  Israel's  worship  and  the  spiritual 
teachings  of  the  prophets,  was  to  return  to  the  stand- 
point of  Moses,  and  bring  back  the  Torah  to  its  original 
oneness.  Whether  this  was  done  by  bringing  to  light 
a  forgotten  Mosaic  book  or  b}'  recasting  the  traditional 
and  consuetudinary  law  in  accordance  with  Mosaic 
principles  is  a  question  purely  historical,  which  does 
not  at  all  affect  the  legitimacy  of  the  work. 

It  is  always  for  the  interest  of  truth  to  discuss  his- 
torical questions  by  purely  historical  methods,  without 
allowing  theological  questions  to  come  in  till  the  histori- 
cal analysis  is  complete.  This  indeed  is  the  chief  reason 
why  scholars  indifferent  to  the  religious  value  of  the 
Bible  have  often  done  good  service  by  their  philological 
and  historical  studies.  For  though  no  one  can  thoroughly 
understand  the  Bible  without  spiritual  sympathy,  our 
spiritual  sympathies  are  often  bound  up  with  theological 
prejudices  which  have  no  real  basis  in  Scripture  ;  and 
it  is  a  wholesome  exercise  to  see  how  the  Bible  history 


312  FUNCTION  OF  lect.  xi. 

presents  itself  to  men  who  approach  the  Bible  from  an 
altogether  different  point  of  view.  It  is  easier  to  correct 
the  errors  of  a  rationalism  with  which  we  have  no 
sympathy,  than  to  lay  aside  prejudices  deeply  inter- 
woven with  our  most  cherished  and  truest  convictions. 

In  strict  method,  then,  we  ought  now  to  prosecute 
the  question  of  the  origin  of  the  Pentateuch  by  the 
ordinary  rules  of  historical  inquiry ;  and  only  when  a 
result  has  been  reached  should  we  pause  to  consider 
the  theological  bearings  of  what  we  have  learned.  But 
we  have  all  been  so  much  accustomed  to  look  at  the 
subject  from  a  dogmatical  point  of  view  that  a  few 
remarks  at  this  stage  on  the  theological  aspect  of  the 
problem  may  be  useful  in  clearing  the  path  of  critical 
investigation. 

Christian  theology  is  interested  in  the  Law  as  a 
stage  in  the  dispensation  of  God's  purpose  of  grace.  As 
such  it  is  acknowledged  by  our  Lord,  who,  though  He 
came  to  supersede  the  Law,  did  so  only  by  fulfilling  it, 
or,  more  accurately,  by  filling  it  up,  and  supplying  in 
actual  substance  the  good  things  of  which  the  Law  pre- 
sented only  a  shadow  and  unsubstantial  form.  The 
Law,  according  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  was  weak 
and  unprofitable ;  it  carried  nothing  to  its  goal,  and  must 
give  way  to  a  better  hope,  by  which  we  draw  near  to 
God  (Heb.  vii.  18,  19).  The  Law  on  this  view  never 
actually  supplied  the  religious  needs  of  Israel ;  it  served 
only  to  direct  the  religious  attitude  of  the  people,  to  pre- 
vent them  from  turning  aside  into  devious  paths  and 


LECT.  XI.  THE  LA  W.  313 

looking  for  God's  help  in  ways  that  might  tempt  them 
to  forget  His  spiritual  nature  and  fall  back  into 
heathenism.  For  this  purpose  the  Law  presents  an 
artificial  system  of  sanctity,  radiating  from  the  sanctuary 
and  extending  to  all  parts  of  Israel's  life.  The  type  of 
religion  maintained  by  such  a  system  is  certainly  in- 
ferior to  the  religion  of  the  prophets,  which  is  a  thing 
not  of  form  but  of  spirit.  But  the  religion  of  the  pro- 
phets could  not  become  the  type  of  national  religion 
until  Jehovah's  spiiit  rested  on  all  his  people,  and  the 
knowledge  of  Him  dwelt  in  every  heart.  This  was  not 
the  case  under  the  old  dispensation.  The  time  to  which 
Jeremiah  and  Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.,  look  forward,  when  the  pro- 
phetic word  shall  be  as  it  were  incarnate  in  a  regenerate 
nation,  did  not  succeed  the  restoration  from  Babylon. 
On  the  contrary,  the  old  prophetic  converse  of  Jehovah 
with  His  people  flagged  and  soon  died  out,  and  the  word  of 
Jehovah,  which  in  old  days  had  been  a  present  reality,  be- 
came a  memory  of  the  past  and  a  hope  for  the  future.  It 
was  under  these  circumstances  that  the  dispensation  of 
the  Law  became  a  practical  power  in  Israel.  It  did  not 
bring  Israel  into  such  direct  converse  with  Jehovah  as 
prophecy  had  done.  But  for  the  mass  of  the  people  it 
nevertheless  formed  a  distinct  step  in  advance,  for  it 
put  an  end  to  the  anomalous  state  of  things  in  which 
practical  heathenism  had  filled  the  state,  and  the  pro- 
phets preached  to  deaf  ears.  The  legal  ritual  did  not 
satisfy  the  highest  spiritual  needs,  but  it  practically  ex- 
tinguished idolatry.     It  gave  palpable  expression  to  the 


314  FUNCTION  OF  lect.  xi. 

spiritual  nature  of  Jehovah,  and,  around  and  within  the 
ritual,  prophetic  truths  gained  a  hold  of  Israel  such  as 
they  had  never  had  before.  The  book  of  Psalms  is  the 
proof  how  much  of  the  highest  religious  truth,  derived 
not  from  the  Law  but  from  the  Prophets,  dwelt  in  the 
heart  of  the  nation,  and  gave  spiritual  substance  to  the 
barren  forms  of  the  ritual. 

These  facts,  quite  apart  from  any  theory  as  to  the 
age  and  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  vindicate  for  the 
Law  the  position  which  it  holds  in  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  and  in  Christian  theology.  That  the  Law  was  a 
divine  institution,  that  it  formed  an  actual  part  in  the 
gracious  scheme  of  guidance  which  preserved  the  reli- 
gion of  Jehovah  as  a  living  power  in  Israel  till  shadow 
became  substance  in  the  manifestation  of  Christ,  is  no 
theory  but  an  historical  fact,  which  no  criticism  as  to 
the  origin  of  the  books  of  Moses  can  in  the  least  degree 
invalidate.  On  the  other  hand,  the  work  of  the  Law,  as 
we  have  now  viewed  it,  was  essentially  subsidiary.  As 
S.  Paul  puts  it  in  Eom.  v.  20,  the  Law  came  in  from 
the  side  {vofxo^i  Be  TrapetarjXdev).  It  did  not  lie  in  the 
right  line  of  direct  development,  which,  as  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews  points  out,  leads  straight  from  Jeremiah's 
conception  of  the  New  Covenant  to  the  fulfilment  in 
Christ.  Once  more  we  are  thrown  back  on  S.  Paul's 
explanation.  The  Law  was  but  a  pedagogue,  an  usher 
to  accompany  the  schoolboy  in  the  streets,  and  lead  him 
to  the  appointed  meeting  with  his  true  teacher. 

This  explanation  of  the  function  of  the  Law  is  that  of 


LECT.  XI.  THE  LA  W,  315 

the  New  Testament,  and  it  fits  in  with  all  the  historical 
facts  that  we  have  had  before  us.  But  current  theology, 
instead  of  recognising  the  historical  proof  of  the  divine 
purpose  of  the  Law,  is  inclined  to  stake  everything  on 
the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  whole  system.  If  the  Law 
is  not  written  by  Moses,  it  cannot  be  part  of  the  record 
of  revelation.  But  if  it  could  be  proved  that  Moses 
WTote  the  Law,  what  would  that  add  to  the  proof  that 
its  origin  is  from  God  ?  It  is  not  true  as  a  matter  of 
history  that  Pentateuch  criticism  is  the  source  of  doubts 
as  to  the  right  of  the  Law  to  be  regarded  as  a  divine 
dispensation.  The  older  sceptics,  who  believed  that 
Moses  wrote  the  Pentateuch,  attacked  the  divine  lega- 
tion of  Moses  with  many  arguments  which  criticism 
has  deprived  of  all  force.  You  cannot  prove  a  book  to 
be  God's  word  by  showing  that  it  is  of  a  certain  age. 
The  proof  of  God's  word  is  that  it  does  His  work  in  the 
world,  and  carries  on  His  truth  towards  the  final  revela- 
tion in  Christ  Jesus.  This  proof  the  Pentateuch  can 
adduce,  but  only  for  the  time  subsequent  to  Ezra.  In 
reality,  to  insist  that  the  w^hole  Law  is  the  w^ork  of 
Moses  is  to  interpose  a  most  serious  difficulty  in  the 
way  of  its  recognition  as  a  divine  dispensation.  Before 
the  Exile  the  law  of  ceremonies  was  not  an  effectual 
means  to  prevent  defection  in  Israel,  and  Jehovah 
Himself  never  dispensed  His  grace  according  to  its  pro- 
visions. Is  it  possible  that  He  laid  down  in  the  wilder- 
ness, wdth  sanctions  the  most  solemn,  and  with  a 
precision  which   admitted  no  exception,  an   order  of 


316  THE  THREE  lect.  xr. 

worship  and  ritual  which  has  no  further  part  in  Israel's 
history  for  well-nigh  a  thousand  years  ? 

But  I  do  not  urge  this  point.  I  do  not  desire  to 
raise  difficulties  against  the  common  view,  but  to  show 
that  the  valid  and  sufficient  proof  that  the  Law  has  a 
legitimate  place  in  the  record  of  Old  Testament  revela- 
tion, and  that  history  assigns  to  it  the  same  place  as  it 
claims  in  Christian  theology,  is  derived  from  a  quarter 
altogether  independent  of  the  critical  question  as  to  the 
authorship  and  composition  of  the  Pentateuch.  This 
being  premised,  we  can  turn  with  more  composure  to 
inquire  what  the  Pentateuch  itself  teaches  as  to  its  com- 
position and  date. 

The  Pentateuch,  as  we  have  it,  is  not  a  formal  law- 
book, but  a  history  beginning  with  the  Creation  and 
running  on  continuously  into  the  book  of  Joshua.  The 
Law,  or  rather  several  distinct  legal  collections,  are 
inserted  in  the  historical  context.  Confining  our  atten- 
tion to  the  main  elements,  we  can  readily  distinguish 
three  principal  groups  of  laws  or  ritual  ordinances  in 
addition  to  the  ten  commandments. 

L  The  collection  Exod.  xxi.-xxiii.  This  is  an  in- 
dependent body  of  laws,  with  a  title,  "  These  are  the 
judgments  which  thou  shalt  set  before  them."  It  is 
inserted  in  immediate  connection  with  the  fundamental 
revelation  of  the  ten  commandments  on  Horeb,  and 
contains  a  very  simple  system  of  civil  and  religious 
polity,  adequate  to  the  wants  of  a  primitive  agricultural 
people.     I  shall  call  this  the  First  Legislation. 


LECT.  XI.  CROUPS  OF  LA  IVS.  317 

II.  The  Law  of  Deuteronomy.  The  book  of  Deutero- 
nomy contains  a  good  deal  of  matter  rather  hortatory 
than  legislative.  The  Deuteronomic  code  proper  begins 
at  chap,  xii.,  with  the  title,  "  These  are  the  statutes  and 
judgments  which  ye  shall  observe  to  do,"  etc. ;  and 
closes  with  the  subscription  (Deut.  xxvi.  1 6  seq.),  "  This 
day  Jehovah  thy  God  hath  commanded  thee  to  do  these 
statutes  and  judgments,"  etc.  The  Deuteronomic  Code, 
as  we  may  call  Deut.  xii.-xxvi.,  is  not  a  mere  supple- 
ment to  the  First  Legislation.  It  is  an  independent 
reproduction  of  its  substance,  sometimes  merely  repeat- 
ing the  older  laws,  but  at  other  times  extending  or 
modifying  them.  It  covers  the  whole  ground  of  the  old 
law,  except  the  law  of  treason  (Exod.  xxii  28)  and  the 
details  as  to  compensations  to  be  paid  for  various  in- 
juries. The  Deuteronomic  Code  presupposes  a  regular 
establishment  of  civil  judges  (Deut.  xvi.  18),  and  the 
details  of  compensation  in  civil  suits  might  naturally 
be  left  in  their  hands.  ^^^ 

III.  Quite  distinct  from  both  these  codes  is  the  Levi- 
tical  Legislation.  The  Levitical  ordinances,  including 
directions  for  the  equipment  of  the  sanctuary  and  priest- 
hood, sacrificial  laws,  and  the  whole  system  of  threefold 
sanctity  in  priests,  Levites,  and  people,  are  scattered 
through  several  parts  of  Exodus  and  the  books  of  Levi- 
ticus and  Numbers.  They  do  not  form  a  compact  code; 
but,  as  a  whole,  they  are  clearly  marked  off  from  both 
the  other  legislations,  and  might  be  removed  from  the 
Pentateuch  without  making  the  rest  unintelligible.    The 


318  THE  THREE 


First  Legislation  and  the  Code  of  Deuteronomy  take  the 
land  of  Canaan  as  their  basis.  They  give  directions  for 
the  life  of  Jehovah's  people  in  the  land  He  gives  them. 
The  Levitical  Legislation  starts  from  the  sanctuary  and 
the  priesthood.  Its  object  is  to  develop  the  theory  of  a 
religious  life  which  has  its  centre  in  the  sanctuary,  and 
is  ruled  by  principles  of  holiness  radiating  forth  from 
Jehovah's  dwelling-place.  The  first  two  Legislations 
deal  with  Israel  as  a  nation ;  in  the  third  Israel  is  a 
church,  and  as  such  is  habitually  addressed  as  a  "  con- 
gregation" (^edah),  a  word  characteristic  of  the  Levitical 
Law. 

These  three  bodies  of  law  are,  in  a  certain  sense, 
independent  of  the  historical  narrative  of  the  Penta- 
teuch in  which  they  now  occur.  For  the  first  two  Legisla- 
tions this  is  quite  plain.  They  are  formal  codes  which 
may  very  well  have  existed  as  separate  law  books  before 
they  were  taken  up  into  the  extant  history.  The  Levi- 
tical Legislation  seems  at  first  sight  to  stand  on  a  different 
footing.  Individual  portions  of  it,  such  as  the  chapters 
at  the  beginning  and  end  of  Leviticus,  have  a  purely 
legal  form  ;  but  a  great  part  of  the  ordinances  of  law  or 
ritual  takes  the  shape  of  narrative.  Thus,  the  law  for 
the  consecration  of  priests  is  given  in  a  narrative  of 
the  consecration  of  Aaron  and  his  sons.  The  form  is 
historical,  but  the  essential  object  is  legal.  The  law 
takes  the  form  of  recorded  precedent.  There  is  nothing 
suq^rising  in  this.  Among  the  Arabs,  to  this  day, 
traditional  precedents  are  the  essence  of  law,  and  the 


LECT.  XI.  GROUPS  OF  LAWS.  319 

Kadbi  of  the  Arabs  is  he  who  has  inherited  a  know- 
ledge of  them.  Among  early  nations  precedent  is  par- 
ticularly regarded  in  matters  of  ritual ;  and  the  oral 
Torah  of  the  priests  doubtless  consisted,  in  great 
measure,  of  case  law.  But  law  of  this  kind  is  still 
essentially  law,  not  history.  It  is  preserved,  not  as  a 
record  of  the  past,  but  as  a  guide  for  the  present  and 
the  future.  The  Pentateuch  itself  shows  clearly  that 
this  law,  in  historical  form,  is  not  an  integral  part  of 
the  continuous  history  of  Israel's  movements  in  the 
wilderness,  but  a  separate  thing.  For  in  Exodus  xxxiii. 
7,  which  is  non-Levitical,  we  read  that  Moses  took  the 
tabernacle  and  pitched  it  outside  the  camp,  and  called 
it  the  tent  of  meeting.  But  the  Levitical  account  of 
the  setting  up  of  the  tabernacle,  with  the  similar  circum- 
stance of  the  descent  of  the  cloud  upon  it,  does  not 
occur  till  chap.  xL  (comp.  Num.  ix.  15).  Again,  in 
Numbers  x.  we  have  first  the  Levitical  account  of  the 
fixed  order  of  march  of  the  Israelites  from  Sinai  with 
the  ark  in  the  midst  of  the  host  (w.  11-28),  and  im- 
mediately afterwards  the  historical  statement  that  when 
the  Israelites  left  Sinai  tlie  ark  was  not  in  their  midst 
but  w^ent  before  them  a  distance  of  three  days'  journey 
(vv.  33-36).^'^^  It  is  plain  that  though  the  formal  order 
of  march  with  the  ark  in  the  centre,  which  the  author 
sets  forth  as  a  standing  pattern,  is  here  described  in 
the  historical  guise  of  a  record  of  the  departure  of 
Israel  from  Sinai,  the  actual  order  of  march  on  that 
occasion  was  different.     The  same  autlior  cannot  have 


320  THE  WRITINGS  lect.  xi. 

written  both  accounts.  One  is  a  law  in  narrative  form  ; 
the  other  is  actual  history.  These  examples  are  forcible 
enough,  but  they  form  only  a  fragment  of  a  great  chain 
of  evidence  which  critics  have  collected.  By  many 
marks,  and  particularly  by  extremely  well-defined  pecu- 
liarities of  language,  a  Levitical  document  can  be  sepa- 
rated out  from  the  Pentateuch,  containing  the  whole 
mass  of  priestly  legislation  and  precedents,  and  leaving 
untouched  the  essentially  historical  part  of  the  Penta- 
teuch, all  that  has  for  its  direct  aim  to  tell  us  what  befell 
the  Israelites  in  the  wilderness,  and  not  what  precedents 
the  wilderness  offered  for  subsequent  ritual  observances. 
As  the  Pentateuch  now  stands,  the  two  elements  of  law 
and  history  are  interspersed,  not  only  in  the  same  book, 
but  often  in  the  same  chapter.  But  originally  they 
were  quite  distinct.  ^^^ 

The  Pentateuch,  then,  is  a  history  incorporating  at 
least  three  bodies  of  law.  The  history  does  not  profess 
to  be  written  by  Moses,  but  only  notes  from  time 
to  time  that  he  wrote  down  certain  special  things 
(Exod.  xvii.  14,  xxiv.  4,  xxxiv.  27 ;  Num.  xxxiii.  2  ; 
Deut.  xxxi.  9,  22,  24).  These  notices  of  what  Moses 
himself  wrote  are  so  far  from  proving  him  the  author 
of  the  whole  Pentateuch  that  they  rather  point  in  the 
opposite  direction.  What  he  wrote  is  distinguished 
from  the  mass  of  the  text,  and  he  himself  is  habitually 
spoken  of  in  the  third  person.  It  is  common  to  explain 
this  as  a  literary  artifice  analogous  to  that  adopted  by 
Caesar  in  his  Commentaries.     But  it  is  a  strong  thing  to 


LECT.  XI.  OF  MOSES.  321 

suppose  that  so  artificial  a  way  of  writing  is  as  old 
as  Moses,  and  belongs  to  the  earliest  age  of  Hebrew 
authorship.  One  asks  for  proof  that  any  Hebrew  ever 
wrote  of  himself  in  the  third  person,  and  particularly 
that  Moses  would  write  such  a  verse  as  Numbers  xii. 
3,  "The  man  Moses  was  very  meek  above  all  men 
living." 

The  idea  that  Moses  is  author  of  the  whole  Penta- 
teuch, except  the  last  chapter  of  Deuteronomy,  is 
derived  from  the  old  Jewish  theory  in  Josephus  that 
every  leader  of  Israel  wrote  down  by  Divine  authority 
the  events  of  his  own  time,  so  that  the  sacred  history 
is  like  a  day-book  constantly  ^\Titten  up  to  date.  No 
part  of  the  Bible  corresponds  to  this' description,  and 
the  Pentateuch  as  little  as  any.  For  example,  the  last 
chapter  of  Deuteronomy,  which  on  the  common  theory 
is  a  note  added  by  Joshua  to  the  work  in  which 
Moses  had  carried  down  the  history  till  just  before  his 
death,  cannot  reaUy  have  been  written  till  after  Joshua 
was  dead  and  gone.  For  it  speaks  of  the  city  Dan. 
Now  Dan  is  the  new  name  of  Laish,  which  that  town 
received  after  the  conquest  of  the  Danites  in  the  age  of 
the  Judges,  when  Moses's  grandson  became  priest  of 
their  idolatrous  sanctuary.  But  if  the  last  chapter  of 
Deuteronomy  is  not  contemporary  history,  what  is  tlie 
proof  that  the  rest  of  that  book  is  so  ?  There  is  not  an 
atom  of  proof  that  the  hand  which  wrote  the  last 
chapter  had  no  share  in  the  rest  of  the  book. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Pentateuch al  history  was 


322  AGE  OF  THE  lect.  xi 

written  in  the  land  of  Canaan,  and  if  it  is  all  by  one 
hand  it  was  not  composed  before  the  period  of  the 
kings.  Genesis  xxxvi.  31  seq.  gives  a  list  of  kings  who 
reigned  in  Edom  "  before  there  reigned  a  king  of  the 
children  of  Israel."  This  carries  us  down  at  least  to 
the  time  of  Saul ;  but  the  probable  meaning  of  the  pass- 
age is  that  these  kings  ruled  before  Edom  was  subject 
to  an  Israelite  monarch,  which  brings  us  to  David  at 
any  rate.  Of  course  this  conclusion  may  be  evaded  by 
saying  that  certain  verses  or  chapters  are  late  additions, 
that  the  list  of  Edomite  kings,  and  such  references  to 
the  conquest  of  Canaan  as  are  found  in  Deut.  ii.  12, 
iv.  38,  are  insertions  of  Ezra  or  another  editor.  This 
might  be  a  fair  enough  thing  to  say  if  any  positive 
proof  were  forthcoming  that  Moses  wrote  the  mass  of 
the  Pentateuch ;  but  in  the  absence  of  such  proof  no 
one  has  a  right  to  call  a  passage  the  insertion  of  an 
editor  without  internal  evidence  that  it  is  in  a  different 
style  or  breaks  the  context.  And  as  soon  as  we  come 
to  this  point  we  must  apply  the  method  consistently, 
and  let  internal  evidence  tell  its  whole  story.  That,  as 
we  shall  soon  see,  is  a  good  deal  more  than  those  who 
raise  this  potent  spirit  are  willing  to  hear. 

The  proof  that  the  Pentateuch  was  written  in  Can- 
aan does  not  turn  on  mere  isolated  texts  which  can  be 
separated  from  the  context.  It  lies  equally  in  usages 
of  language  that  cannot  be  due  to  an  editor.  There 
has  been  a  great  controversy  about  Deut.  i.  1  and  other 
similar  passages,  where  the  land  east  of  the  Jordan  is 


LECT.  XI.  PENTATEUCH,  323 

said  to  be  across  Jordan,  proving  that  the  writer  lived  '*\*^V' 
in  Western  Palestine.     That  this  is  the  natural  sense  of 
the  Hebrew  word  no  one  can  doubt,  but  we  have  elabo-  ' 

rate  arguments  that  Hebrew  was  such  an  elastic  language 
that  the  phrase  can  equally  mean  "on  this  side  Jordan,"  , 

as  the  English  Version  has  it.     The  point  is  really  of  no  \ 

consequence,  for  there  are  other  phrases  which  prove  \ 

quite  unambiguously  that  the  Pentateuch  was  written  I 

in  Canaan.     In  Hebrew  the  common  phrase  for  "  west- 
ward "  is  "  seaward,"  and  for  southward  *'  towards  the 
Negeb."      The  word   Negeb,    which   primarily  means  "Hill 
"  parched  land,"  is  in  Hebrew  the  proper  name  of  the 
dry  steppe  district  in  the  south  of  Judah.     These  ex-  j 

pressions   for  west  and  south  could  only  be   formed  ! 

within  Palestine.    Yet  they  are  used  in  the  Pentateuch,  j 

not  only  in  the  narrative  but  in  the  Levitical  descrip-  | 

tion  of  the  tabernacle  in  the  wilderness  (Exod.  xxvii.).  I 

But  at  Mount  Sinai  the  sea  did  not  lie  to  the  west,  and  ! 

the  N^geb  was  to  the  north.     Moses  could  no  more  call  \ 

the  south  side  the  Negeb  side  of  the  tabernacle  than  a 
Glasgow  man  could  say  that  the  sun  set  over  Edinburgh. 
The  answer  attempted  to  this  is  that  the  Hebrews  miglit 
have  adopted  these  phrases  in  patriarchal  times,  and  never  \ 

given  them  up  in  the  ensuing  four  hundred  and  thirty 
years  ;  but  that  is  nonsense.    When  a  man  says  "  towards  ; 

the  sea  "  he  means  it.    The  Egyptian  Arabs  say  seaward  ' 

for  northward,  and  so  the  Israelites  must  have  done  when 
they  were  in  Egypt.  To  an  Arab  in  Western  Arabia, 
on  the  contrary  seaward  means  towards  the  Pied  Sea. 


324  SOURCES  OF  lect.  xi. 

Again,  the  Pentateuch  displays  an  exact  topographical 
knowledge  of  Palestine,  but  by  no  means  so  exact  a 
knowledge  of  the  wilderness  of  the  wandering.  The 
narrator  knew  the  names  of  the  places  famous  in  the 
forty  years'  wandering  ;  but  for  Canaan  he  knew  local 
details,  and  describes  them  with  exactitude  as  they  were 
in  his  own  time  {e.g.,  Gen.  xii.  8,  xxxiii.  18,  xxxv.  19, 
20).  Accordingly,  the  patriarchal  sites  can  still  be  set 
down  on  the  map  with  definiteness  ;  but  geographers 
are  unable  to  assign  with  certainty  the  site  of  Mount 
Sinai,  because  the  narrative  has  none  of  that  topo- 
graphical colour  which  the  story  of  an  eyewitness  is 
sure  to  possess.  Once  more,  the  Pentateuch  cites  as 
authorities  poetical  records  which  are  not  earlier  than 
the  time  of  Moses.  One  of  these  records  is  a  book,  the 
Book  of  the  Wars  of  Jehovah  (Num.  xxi.  14) ;  did 
Moses,  writing  contemporary  history,  find  and  cite  a 
book  already  current  containing  poetry  on  the  wars  of 
Jehovah  and  His  people,  which  began  in  his  own  times  ? 
Another  poetical  authority  cited  is  a  poem  circulating 
among  the  Moshelim  or  reciters  of  sarcastic  verses  (Num. 
xxi.  27  seq.).  It  refers  to  the  victory  over  Sihon,  which 
took  place  at  the  very  end  of  the  forty  years'  wandering. 
If  Moses  wrote  the  Pentateuch,  what  occasion  could  he 
have  to  authenticate  his  narrative  by  reference  to  these 
traditional  depositaries  of  ancient  poetry  ? 

The  Pentateuch,  then,  was  not  written  in  the  wilder- 
ness ;  but  moreover  it  is  not,  even  in  its  narrative  parts, 
a  single  continuous  work,  but  a  combination  of  several 


LECT.  XI.  THE  PENTATEUCH,  325 

narratives  originally  independent.  The  first  key  to  the 
complex  structure  of  the  history  was  found  in  the  use 
of  the  names  of  God  in  Genesis.  Some  parts  of  Genesis 
habitually  speak  of  Jehovah,  others  as  regularly  use  the 
word  Elohim  ;  and  as  early  as  1753  the  French  physician 
Astruc  showed  that  if  the  text  of  Genesis  be  divided 
into  two  columns,  all  the  Elohim  passages  standing  on 
one  side,  and  the  Jehovah  passages  on  the  other,  we 
get  two  parallel  narratives  which  are  still  practicall}^ 
independent.  This  of  course  was  no  more  than  a  hint 
for  further  investigation.  In  reality  there  are  two  in- 
dependent documents  in  Genesis  which  use  Elohim. 
A  third  uses  Jehovah,  and  the  process  by  which  the 
three  were  finally  interwoven  into  one  book  is  somewhat 
difficult  to  follow.  Astruc  supposed  that  these  docu- 
ments were  all  older  than  Moses,  and  that  he  was  the 
final  editor.  But  later  critics  have  shown  that  the  same 
documents  can  be  traced  through  the  whole  Penta- 
teuch, and  even  to  the  end  of  the  book  of  Joshua.  To 
prove  this  in  detail  would  occupy  several  lectures.  I 
can  only  give  one  or  two  illustrations  to  prove  that 
these  results  are  not  imaginary. 

A  modern  writer,  making  a  history  with  the  aid  of 
older  records,  masters  their  contents  and  then  writes  a 
wholly  new  book.  Tliat  is  not  the  way  of  Eastein 
historians.  If  we  take  up  the  great  Arabic  historians — 
say  Tabary,  Ibn  el  Athir,  Ibn  Khaldun,  and  Abulfeda — 
we  often  find  passages  occurring  almost  word  for  word  in 
each.  All  use  directly  or  indirectly  the  same  sources, 
15 


326  METHOD  OF  lect.  xi. 

and  copy  these  sources  verbally  as  far  as  is  consistent 
with  the  scope  and  scale  of  their  several  works.  Thus 
a  comparatively  modern  book  has  often  the  freshness 
and  full  colour  of  a  contemporary  narrative,  and  we  can 
still  separate  out  the  old  sources  from  their  modern 
setting.  So  it  is  in  the  Bible,  as  we  have  already  seen 
in  the  case  of  the  books  of  Kings.  It  is  this  way  of 
writing  that  makes  the  Bible  history  so  vivid  and  in- 
teresting, in  spite  of  its  extraordinary  brevity  in  compari- 
son with  the  vast  periods  of  time  that  it  covers.  Think 
only  what  a  mass  of  veracious  detail  we  were  able  to 
gather  in  Lecture  IX.  for  the  state  of  ritual  in  ancient 
Israel.  No  compend  on  the  same  scale  written  on 
modern  principles  could  have  preserved  so  much  of  the 
genuine  life  of  antique  times.  It  stands  to  reason  that 
the  Pentateuch  should  exhibit  the  same  features,  and 
the  superciliousness  with  which  traditionalists  declare 
the  labours  of  the  critics  to  be  visionary  is  merely  the 
contempt  of  ignorance,  which  has  never  handled  old 
Eastern  histories,  and  judges  everything  from  a  Western 
and  modern  standpoint. 

Every  one  can  see  that,  when  we  have  this  general 
key  to  the  method  of  ancient  Eastern  historians,  it  is 
quite  a  practical  undertaking  to  try  to  separate  the 
sources  from  which  a  Hebrew  author  worked.  It  will 
not  always  be  possible  to  carry  the  analysis  out  fully  ; 
but  it  is  no  hopeless  task  to  distribute  the  main  masses 
of  the  story  between  the  several  authors  whose  books 
he  used.     Marked  peculiarities  of  language,  of  which 


LECT.  XI.  EASTERN  HISTORIANS.  327 

the  use  of  the  names  of  God  is  the  most  celebrated  but  \ 

not  the  most  conclusive,  are  a  great  help  ;   and  along  i 

with  these  a  multitude  of  other  indications  come  in,  in 
the  process  of  analysis. 

A  very  clear  case  is  the  account  of  the  flood.  As  it 
now  stands  the  narrative  has  the  most  singular  repeti- 
tions, and  things  come  in  in  the  strangest  order.  But 
as  soon  as  we  separate  the  Jehovah  and  Elohim  docu-  I 

nients  all  is  clear.  The  first  narrative  tells  that  Jehovah 
saw  the  wickedness  of  men  and  determined  to  destroy 
them.  But  Noah  found  grace  in  His  eyes,  and  was 
called  to  enter  the  ark  with  a  pair  of  all  unclean  beasts, 
and  clean  beasts  and  fowls  by  sevens ;  for,  he  is  told, 
after  seven  days  a  forty  days'  rain  will  ensue  and 
destroy  all  life.  Noah  obeys  the  command,  the  seven 
days  elapse,  and  the  rain  follows  as  predicted,  floating 
the  ark  but  destroying  all  outside  of  it.  Then  the  rain 
ceases  and  the  waters  sink.  As  soon  as  the  rain  is  over 
Noah  opens  the  window  of  the  ark,  and  sends  out  the 
dove  and  the  raven.  After  fourteen  days  the  dove,  sent 
out  for  the  third  time,  does  not  return,  and  Noah  re- 
moving the  covering  of  the  ark  finds  the  ground  dry, 
builds  an  altar  and  does  sacrifice,  receiving  the  promise 
that  the  flood  shall  not  again  recur  and  disturb  the 
course  of  the  seasons.  The  parallel  Elohistic  narrative 
is  equally  complete.  It  also  relates  God's  anger  with 
mankind.  Noah  receives  orders  to  build  the  ark  and 
take  in  the  animals  in  pairs  (there  is  no  mention  of  the 
sevens  of  clean  beasts).     The  flood  begins  when  Noah 


328  THE  SOURCES  lect.  xi. 

is  six  hundred  years  old,  and  he  enters  the  ark.  The 
fountains  of  the  great  deep  are  broken  up,  and  the 
windows  of  heaven  opened ;  but  on  the  same  day, 
Noah,  his  family,  and  the  pairs  of  animals  enter  the 
ark.  The  waters  rise  till  they  cover  the  hills,  and  swell 
for  a  hundred  and  fifty  days,  when  they  are  assuaged 
by  a  great  wind,  and  the  fountains  of  the  deep  and  the 
windows  of  heaven  are  closed,  and  so  just  five  months 
after  the  flood  commenced  the  ark  rests  on  a  point  in 
the  mountains  of  Ararat.  After  the  one  hundred  and 
fifty  days  the  waters  fail,  and  continue  to  decrease  for 
two  months  and  a  half,  till  the  tops  of  the  mountains 
are  seen.  In  other  three  months  the  face  of  the  earth 
was  freed  of  water,  but  it  was  not  till  the  lapse  of  a  full 
solar  year  that  Noah  was  permitted  to  leave  the  ark, 
when  he  received  God's  blessing,  the  so-called  Noachic 
ordinances,  and  the  sign  of  the  bow.  These  two  accounts 
are  plainly  independent,  and  each  is  complete  in  itself. 
It  is  impossible  that  the  work  of  one  author  could  so 
divide  itself  into  two  narratives,  and  have  for  each 
narrative  a  different  name  of  God.^^^ 

The  proof  that  the  same  variety  of  hands  runs  through 
to  the  end  of  the  book  of  Joshua  would  carry  us  too 
far,  and  is  the  less  necessary  because  the  fact  will  hardly 
be  denied  by  those  who  admit  the  existence  of  separate 
sources  in  the  Pentateuch  at  all.  For  those  who  cannot 
follow  the  details  of  the  original  text  it  is  more  profit- 
able to  concentrate  attention  on  the  legal  parts  of  the 
Pentateuch.     What  has  been  said  is  enough  to  show 


LECT.  XI.  OF  GENESIS.  329 

that  tlie  Pentateuch  is  a  much  more  complex  book  than 
appears  at  first  sight,  and  that  in  its  present  form  it  was 
written  after  the  time  of  Moses,  nay  after  that  of  Joshua. 
It  is  now  no  longer  permissible  to  insist  that  the  refer- 
ence to  the  kingship  of  Israel  over  Edom  and  similar 
things  are  necessarily  isolated  phenomena.  We  cannot 
venture  to  assert  that  the  composition  of  the  Pentateuch 
out  of  older  sources  of  various  date  took  place  before 
the  time  of  the  kings.  How  much  of  it  is  early,  how 
much  comparatively  late,  must  be  determined  by  a 
wider  inquiry,  and  for  this  the  laws  give  the  best 
starting-point. 

The  post-Mosaic  date  of  the  narrative  does  not  in 
itself  prove  that  the  laws  were  not  all  written  by 
Moses.  Two  of  our  three  legislative  Corpora  are 
independent  of  the  history.  The  third  is  at  least  inde- 
pendent of  the  main  thread  of  the  narrative,  and  deals 
with  history  only  for  legal  and  ritual  purposes.  But 
does  the  Pentateuch  represent  Moses  as  having  written 
the  legal  codes  which  it  embodies?  So  far  as  the 
ritual  of  Levitical  legislation  is  concerned,  we  can 
answer  this  question  at  once  with  a  decisive  negative. 
It  is  nowhere  said  that  Moses  wrote  down  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  tabernacle  and  its  ordinances,  or  the  law  of 
sacrifice.  And  in  many  places  the  laws  of  this  legisla- 
tion are  expressly  set  forth  as  oral.  Moses  is  com- 
manded to  speak  to  Aaron  or  to  the  Israelites,  as  the 
case  may  be,  and  communicate  to  them  God's  will. 
This   fact  is  significant  when  we  remember  that  the 


330  IVHA  T  DID  lect.  xi 

Torali  of  the  priests  referred  to  by  the  prophets  is 
plainly  oral  instruction.  There  is  nothing  in  the  Pen- 
tateuch that  does  not  confirm  the  prior  probability  that 
ritual  law  was  long  an  affair  of  practice  and  tradition, 
resting  on  knowledge  that  belonged  to  the  priestly 
guild.  But  the  priests,  according  to  Hosea,  forgot  the 
Torah,  and  we  have  seen  that  neither  at  Shiloh  nor  in 
Jerusalem  did  the  ritual  law  exist  in  its  present  form, 
or  even  its  present  theory.  Thus  we  are  reduced  to 
this  alternative : — either  the  ritual  law  was  written 
down  by  the  priests  immediately  after  Moses  gave  it  to 
them,  or  at  least  in  the  first  years  of  residence  in 
Canaan,  and  then  completely  forgotten  by  them ;  or 
else  it  was  not  written  till  long  after,  when  the  priests 
who  forgot  the  law  were  chastised  by  exile,  and  a 
new  race  arose  who  accepted  the  rebukes  of  the  pro- 
phets. The  former  hypothesis  implies  that  a  book 
specially  meant  for  the  priests,  and  kept  in  their 
custody,  survived  many  centuries  of  total  neglect  and 
frequent  removals  of  the  sanctuary,  and  that  too  at 
a  time  when  books  were  written  in  such  a  way  that 
damp  soon  made  them  illegible.  Yet  the  text  of 
this  book,  which  the  priests  had  forgotten,  is  much 
more  perfect  than  that  of  the  Psalms  or  the  books 
of  Samuel.  These  are  grave  difficulties  ;  and  they 
must  become  decisive  when  we  show  that  an  earlier 
code,  contradicting  the  Levitical  legislation  in  import- 
ant points,  was  actually  current  in  early  times  as  the 
divine  law  of  Israel. 


LECT.  XI.  MOSES  WRITE  ?  331 

While  the  Pentateuch  does  not  make  Moses  the 
author  of  the  Levitical  code,  it  tells  that  he  wrote 
down  certain  laws.  He  wrote  down  the  words  of 
Jehovah's  covenant  with  Israel  (Exod.  xxxiv.  27,  28  ; 
Exod.  xxiv.  4,  7).  In  the  former  passage  the  words 
of  the  covenant  are  expressly  identified  with  the  Ten 
Words  on  the  tables  of  stone.  In  the  latter  passage 
the  same  thing  seems  to  be  meant ;  for,  though  at  first 
sight  the  *'  words  of  Jehovah  "  in  Exod.  xxiv.  4  may  be 
thought  to  include  the  "judgments,"  or  code  of  civil 
and  other  laws,  we  observe  at  ver.  3  that  the  "  words  of 
Jehovah" — the  commandments  spoken  from  Sinai — are 
distinguished  from  the  "judgments."  Indeed,  details 
of  damages  for  civil  injuries  and  the  like,  with  the  law 
of  blood-revenge,  common  to  the  Hebrews  with  their 
Arab  cousins,  could  hardly  be  reckoned  as  part  of  the 
covenant  on  which  Jehovah's  relation  to  Israel  was 
permanently  based. 

Till  we  come  to  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  then,  we 
find  no  statement  that  Moses  wrote  down  more  than 
the  ten  commandments.  In  Deut.  xxxi.  9,  24,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  account  of  Moses's  last  address  to  the 
people  is  followed  by  the  statement  that  he  wrote  "  the 
words  of  this  law  "  in  a  book,  which  he  deposited  with 
the  Levites  to  be  preserved  beside  the  ark.  Now  Deut. 
xxxi.,  which  speaks  of  Moses  in  the  third  peisoii,  is  dis- 
tinct from  the  code  in  which  he  speaks  of  himself  in  the 
first  person.  Do  the  words  of  this  chapter  imply  that  the 
person — not  Moses — who  wrote  it  had  before  him  the 


332  WHAT  DID  lect.  xi. 

Deuteron^mic  code  as  a  book  which  lie  knew  to  have 
existed  separately,  and  accepted  as  the  actual  writing  of 
Moses  ?  It  may  be  so,  but  the  inference  is  not  certain. 
The  narrative  certainly  implies  that  the  present  Deutero- 
nomic  code  answers  to  what  Moses  wrote,  that  it  is  the 
divine  Torah  as  the  narrator  was  guided  to  present  it 
to  his  readers.  But  then  we  must  remember  that  there 
is,  as  we  have  seen,  an  elasticity  about  the  phrase 
Torah.  Among  the  later  Jews  it  may  mean  something 
as  narrow  as  the  ten  commandments,  or  it  may  mean 
something  much  wider,  and  yet  the  summary  and  the 
expansion  are  not  viewed  as  two  Torahs,  but  as  the 
same  Torah  in  two  forms.  It  was  already  so  in  the  days 
of  Deuteronomy.  Tor,  according  to  Deut.  xxvii.  8, 
"  all  the  words  of  this  law  "  are  to  be  written  on  the 
plaistered  stones  of  Mount  Ebal ;  and  here,  as  Calvin 
points  out,  we  can^_onlj  understand  the  sum  and  sub- 
stance of  the  law.  In  view  of  this  elasticity  of  the^ 
word  Torah,  it  cannot  be  thought  certain  that  the 
author  of  Deut.  xxxi.  means  to  convey,  as  an  historical 
fact,  that  the  very  code  of  Deut.  xii.-xxvi.,  in  all 
its  fulness,  was  written  down  word  for  word  by  Moses. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  even  the  speeches  intro- 
ducing and  closing  the  code  are  not  an  exact  transcript 
of  Moses's  words  as  taken  down  by  a  shorthand  reporter. 
They  are  plainly  a  free  reproduction  of  the  spirit  of 
what  he  had  to  say  to  Israel — the  only  thing  that 
ancient  historians,  who  had  no  Hansard  to  refer  to,  could 
possibly  give  in  the  case  of  speeches  which  they  had  not 
heard,  or  even,  in  general,  of  such  as  they  had  heard. 


LECT.  XI.  MOSES  WRITE  f  333 

There  is  notliing  in  tliese  statements  of  tlie  Penta- 
teuch,  when  looked  at  fairly,  which  does  not  leave  it 
quite  an  open  question  when  and  by  what  stages  the 
divine  Torah,  of  which  Moses  was  the  originator, 
assumed  the  form  it  has  in  the  extant  written  codes. 

Now  it  is  a  very  remarkable  fact,  to  begin  witli, 
that  all  the  sacred  law  of  Israel  is  comprised  in  the 
Pentateuch,  and  that,  apart  from  the  Levitical  legisla- 
tion, it  is  presented  in  codified  form.  On  the  traditional 
view,  three  successive  bodies  of  law  were  given  to 
Israel  within  forty  years.  Within  that  short  time 
many  ordinances  were  modified,  and  the  whole  law  of 
Sinai  recast  on  the  plains  of  Moab.  But  from  the  days 
of  Moses  there  was  no  change.  Witli  his  death  the 
Israelites  entered  on  a  new  career,  which  transformed 
the  nomads  of  Goshen  into  the  civilised  inhabitants  of 
vineyard  land  and  cities  in  Canaan.  But  the  Divine 
laws  given  them  beyond  Jordan  were  to  remain 
unmodified  through  all  the  long  centuries  of  develop- 
ment in  Canaan,  an  absolute  and  immutable  code.  I 
say,  with  all  reverence,  that  this  is  impossible.  God  no 
doubt  could  have  given,  by  Moses's  mouth,  a  law  fit  for 
the  age  of  Solomon  or  Hezekiah,  but  sucli  a  law  could 
not  be  fit  for  immediate  application  in  the  days  of  Moses 
and  Joshua.  Every  historical  lawyer  knows  that  in  the 
nature  of  things  the  law  of  the  wilderness  is  different 
from  'the  law  of  a  land  of  high  agriculture  and  popu- 
lous cities.  God  can  do  all  things,  but  He  cannot 
contradict  Himself,  and  He  who  shaped  the  eventful 


334  THE  DIVINE  lect.  xi. 

development  of  Israel's  liistory  must  have  framed  His 
law  to  correspond  with  it. 

It  is  no  conjecture,  but  plain  historical  fact  stated  in 
Exod.  xviii.,  that  Moses  judged  his  contemporaries  by 
bringing  individual  hard  cases  before  Jehovah  for  deci- 
sion. This  was  the  actual  method  of  his  Torah,  a 
method  strictly  practical,  and  in  precise  conformity 
with  the  genius  and  requirements  of  primitive  nations. 
The  events  of  Sinai,  and  the  establishment  of  the  cove- 
nant on  the  basis  of  the  Ten  Words,  did  not  cut  short 
this  kind  of  Torah.  On  the  contrary,  there  is  clear  proof 
that  direct  appeal  to  a  Divine  judgment  continued  to  be 
practised  in  Israel.  The  First  Legislation  (Exod.  xxi.  6, 
xxii.  8)  speaks  of  bringing  a  case  to  God,  and  receiving 
tlie  sentence  of  God,  where  our  version  has  "  the  judges." 
The  sanctuary  was  the  seat  of  judgment,  and  the  deci- 
sions were  Jehovah's  Torah.  So  still,  in  the  time  of  EK, 
we  read  that,  if  man  offend  against  man,  God  gives 
judgment  as  daysman  between  them  (1  Sam.  ii.  25). 
Jehovah  is  in  Israel  a  living  judge,  a  living  and  present 
lawgiver.  He  has  all  the  functions  of  an  actual  king 
present  among  his  people  (Isa.  xxxiii.  22).  So  the 
prophets  still  view  Jehovah's  law  as  a  living  and  growing 
thing,  communicated  to  Israel  as  to  weanlings,  "  precept 
upon  precept,  line  upon  line,  here  a  little  and  there  a 
little  "  (Isa.  xxviii.  9  scq^)  ;  and  their  religion,  drawn 
direct  from  Jehovah,  is  contrasted  with  the  traditional 
religion,  which  is  "a  command  of  men  learned  and 
taught "  (Isa.  xxix.  13).    A  code  is  of  necessity  the  final 


LECT.  XI.  TO  RAH,  335 

result  and  crystallised  form  of  such  a  living  divine 
Torali,  just  as  in  all  nations  consuetudinary  and  judge- 
made  law  precedes  codification  and  statute  law.  The 
difference  between  Israel  and  other  nations  lay  essenti- 
ally in  this,  that  Jehovah  was  Israel's  Judge,  and  there- 
fore Israel's  Lawgiver.  This  divine  Torah  begins  with 
Moses.  As  all  goes  back  to  his  initiative,  the  Israelites 
were  not  concerned  to  remember  the  precise  history  of 
each  new  precept;  and,  when  the  whole  system  de- 
veloped under  continuous  divine  guidance  is  summed 
up  in  a  code,  that  code  is  simply  set  down  as  Mosaic 
Torah.  We  still  call  the  steam-engine  by  the  name  of 
Watt,  though  the  steam-engine  of  to-day  has  many  parts 
that  his  had  not. 

The  Bible  has  not  so  narrow  a  conception  of  revela- 
tion as  we  sometimes  cling  to.  According  to  Isaiah 
xxviii.  23  sec[.  tlie  rules  of  good  husbandry  are  a  *' judg- 
ment "  taught  to  the  ploughman  by  Jehovah,  part  of 
Jehovah's  Torah  (verse  26).  The  piety  of  Israel  re- 
cognised every  sound  and  wholesome  ordinance  of  daily 
and  social  life  as  a  direct  gift  of  Jehovah's  wisdom. 
"  This  also  cometh  forth  from  Jehovah  of  hosts,  whose 
counsel  is  miraculous,  and  His  wisdom  great."  Accord- 
ingly Jehovah's  law  contains,  not  only  institutes  of  direct 
revelation  in  our  limited  sense  of  that  word,  but  old 
consuetudinary  usages,  laws  identical  with  those  of  other 
early  peoples,  which  had  become  sacred  by  being  taken 
up  into  the  God-given  polity  of  Israel,  and  worked  into 
harmony  with  the  veiy  present  reality  of  His  redeeming 


336  THE  FIRST  lect.  xi 

sovereignty.  We  shall  best  picture  to  ourselves  what 
the  ancient  Hebrews  understood  by  divine  statutes,  by 
a  brief  survey  of  the  manner  of  life  prescribed  in  the 
First  Legislation. 

The  society  contemplated  in  this  legislation  is  of 
very  simple  structure.  The  basis  of  life  is  agricultural. 
Cattle  and  agricultural  produce  are  the  elements  of 
wealth,  and  the  laws  of  property  deal  almost  exclu- 
sively with  them.  The  principles  of  civil  and  criminal 
justice  are  those  still  current  among  the  Arabs  of  the 
desert.  They  are  two  in  number,  retaliation  and 
pecuniary  compensation.  Murder  is  dealt  with  by  the 
law  of  blood-revenge,  but  the  innocent  manslayer  may 
seek  asylum  at  God's  altar.  With  murder  are  ranked 
manstealing,  offences  against;  parents,  and  witchcraft. 
Other  injuries  are  occasions  of  self-help  or  of  private 
suits  to  be  adjusted  at  the  sanctuary.  Personal  injuries 
fall  under  the  law  of  retaliation,  just  as  murder  does. 
Blow  for  blow  is  still  the  law  of  the  Arabs,  and  in 
Canaan  no  doubt,  as  in  the  desert,  the  retaliation  was 
usually  sought  in  the  way  of  self-help.  The  principle  of 
retaliation  is  conceived  as  legitimate  vengeance,  xxi.  20, 
21,  margin.  Except  in  this  form  there  is  no  punishment, 
but  only  compensation,  which  in  some  cases  is  at  the 
will  of  the  injured  party  (who  has  the  alternative 
of  direct  revenge),  but  in  general  is  defined  by  law. 

Degrading  punishments,  as  imprisonment  or  the 
bastinado,  are  unknown,  and  loss  of  liberty  is  inflicted 
only  on  the  thief  who  cannot  pay  a  fine.      The  slave 


LECT.  XI.  LEGISLA  TION.  337 

retains  defiuite  rights.  He  recovers  his  freedom  after 
seven  years,  unless  he  prefer  to  remain  a  bondman,  and 
to  seal  this  determination  by  a  symbolical  act  at  the 
door  of  the  sanctuary.  His  right  of  blood-revenge 
against  his  master  is  limited,  and,  instead  of  the  lex 
talionis,  for  minor  injuries  he  can  claim  his  liberty. 
Women  do  not  enjoy  full  social  equality  with  men. 
Women  slaves  were  slaves  for  life,  but  were  usually 
married  to  members  of  the  family  or  servants  of  the 
household.  The  daughter  was  her  father's  property, 
who  received  a  price  for  surrendering  her  to  a  husband ; 
and  so  a  daughter's  dishonour  is  compensated  by  law  as 
a  pecuniary  loss  to  her  father.  The  Israelites  directly 
contemplated  in  these  laws  are  evidently  men  of  inde- 
pendent bearing  and  personal  dignity,  such  as  are  still 
found  in  secluded  parts  of  the  Semitic  world  under  a 
half  -  patriarchal  constitution  of  society  where  every 
freeman  is  a  small  landholder.  But  there  is  no  strong 
central  authority.  The  tribunal  of  the  sanctuary  is 
arbiter,  not  executive.  No  man  is  secure  without  his 
own  aid,  and  the  widow  or  orphan  looks  for  help,  not 
to  man,  but  to  Jehovah  Himself.  But  if  the  executive  is 
weak,  a  strict  regard  for  justice  is  inculcated.  Jehovah 
is  behind  the  law,  and  He  will  vindicate  the  right.  He 
requires  of  Israel  humanity  as  well  as  justice.  The 
Ger,  or  stranger  living  under  the  protection  of  a  family 
or  community,  has  no  legal  status,  but  he  must  not  be 
oppressed/*^^  The  Sabbath  is  enforced  as  an  ordinance  of 
humanity,  and  to  the  same  end  the  produce  of  every 


338  THE  FIRST 


field  or  vineyard  must  be  left  to  the  poor  one  year  in 
seven.  The  precepts  of  positive  cultiis  are  simple.  He 
who  sacrifices  to  any  God  but  Jehovah  falls  under  the 
ban.  The  only  ordinance  of  ceremonial  sanctity  is  to 
abstain  from  the  flesh  of  animals  torn  by  wild  beasts. 
The  sacred  dues  are  the  firstlings  and  first  fruits  :  the 
former  must  be  presented  at  the  sanctuary  on  the 
eighth  day.  This,  of  course,  presupposes  a  plurality  of 
sanctuaries,  and  in  fact  Exodus  xx.  24,  25,  explains 
that  an  altar  of  stone  may  be  built,  and  Jehovah 
acceptably  approached,  in  every  place  where  He  sets  a 
memorial  of  His  name.  The  stated  occasions  of  sacrifice 
are  the  feast  of  unleavened  bread,  in  commemoration  of 
the  exodus,  the  feast  of  harvest,  and  that  of  ingathering. 
These  feasts  mark  the  cycle  of  the  agricultural  year, 
and  at  them  every  male  must  present  his  homage  before 
Jehovah.  The  essential  points  of  sacrificial  ritual  are 
abstinence  from  leaven  in  connection  with  the  blood  of 
the  sacrifice,  and  the  rule  that  the  fat  must  be  burnt 
the  same  night. 

You  see  at  once  that  this  is  no  abstract  divine 
legislation.  It  is  a  social  system  adapted  for  a  very 
definite  national  life.  On  the  common  view,  many 
of  its  precepts  were  immediately  superseded  by  the 
Levitical  or  Deuteronomic  code,  before  they  ever  had  a 
chance  of  being  put  in  operation  in  Canaan.  But  this 
hypothesis,  so  dishonouring  to  the  Divine  Legislator, 
who  can  do  nothing  in  vain,  is  refuted  by  the  whole 
tenor  of  the  code,  which  undoubtedly  is  as  living  and 


LECT.  XI.  LEGISLA  TION.  339 

real  a  system  of  law  as  was  ever  written.  The  details 
of  the  system  are  almost  all  such  as  are  found  among 
other  nations.  The  law  of  Israel  does  not  yet  aim  at 
singularity ;  it  is  enough  that  it  is  pervaded  by  a  con- 
stant sense  that  the  righteous  and  gracious  Jehovah  is 
behind  the  law,  and  wields  it  in  conformity  with  His 
own  holy  nature.  The  law,  therefore,  makes  no  pre- 
tence at  ideality.  It  contains  precepts  adapted,  as  our 
Lord  puts  it,  to  the  hardness  of  the  people's  heart.  The 
ordinances  are  not  ideally  perfect,  and  fit  to  be  a  rule  of 
life  in  every  state  of  society,  but  they  are  fit  to  make 
Israel  a  righteous,  humane,  and  God-fearing  people, 
and  to  facilitate  a  healthy  growth  towards  better  things. 
The  important  point  that  reference  to  Jehovah  and 
His  character  determines  the  spirit  rather  than  the 
details  of  the  legislation  cannot  be  too  strongly  accen- 
tuated. The  civil  laws  are  exactly  such  as  the  conipara- 
tive  lawyer  is  familiar  with  in  other  nations.  Even  the 
religious  ordinances  are  far  from  unique  in  their  formal 
elements.  The  feast  of  unleavened  bread  has  a  special 
reference  to  the  deliverance  from  Egypt,  which  is  the 
historical  basis  of  Israel's  distinctive  religion.  But 
even  this  feast  has  also  an  agricultural  reference  ;  and 
the  two  others,  which  are  purely  agricultural,  are  quite 
analogous  to  what  is  found  in  other  nations.  The 
Canaanite  vintage  feast  at  Shechem  is  a  close  parallel 
to  the  feast  of  ingathering  (supra,  p.  257).  The  sacred 
dues  have  also  their  analogies  outside  Israel.  It  is 
enough  to  refer  to  the  offering  of  a  firstling  sheep  or 


340  THE  FIRST  lect.  xi. 

camel  observed  by  the  heathen  Arabs  under  the  name 
of  fard.  The  distinctive  character  of  the  religion 
appears  in  the  laws  directed  against  polytheism  and 
witchcraft,  in  the  prominence  given  to  righteousness 
and  humanity  as  the  things  which  are  most  pleasing  to 
Jehovah  and  constitute  the  true  significance  of  such  an 
ordinance  as  the  Sabbath,  and,  above  all,  in  the  clear- 
ness with  which  the  law  holds  forth  the  truth  that 
Jehovah's  goodness  to  Israel  is  no  mere  natural  relation 
such  as  binds  Moab  to  Chemosh,  that  His  favour  to  His 
people  is  directed  by  moral  principles  and  is  forfeited 
by  moral  iniquity.  In  this  code  we  read  already  the 
foundation  of  the  thesis  of  Amos  that  just  because 
Jehovah  knows  Israel  He  observes  and  punishes  the 
nation's  sins  (Amos  iii.  2  ;  Exod.  xxii.  23,  27,  xxiii.  V). 
Now,  we  have  seen  that  before  the  Exile  the  most 
characteristic  features  of  the  Levitical  legislation,  and 
so  the  most  prominent  things  in  our  present  Pentateuch, 
had  no  influence  on  Israel,  either  on  the  righteous  or 
the  wicked.  This  result  involved  us  in  great  perplexity. 
For,  if  the  traditional  view  of  the  age  of  the  Pentateuch 
is  correct,  there  was  through  all  these  centuries  an  abso- 
lute divorce  between  God's  written  law  and  the  practical 
workings  of  His  grace.  And  the  perplexity  was  only 
increased  when  we  found  that,  nevertheless,  there  was 
a  Torah  in  Israel  before  the  prophetic  books,  to  which 
the  prophets  appeal  as  the  indisputable  standard  of 
Jehovah's  will.  But  the  puzzle  is  solved  when  we 
compare  the  history  with  this  First  Legislation.     It  did 


LECT.  XI.  LEGISLATION.  341 

not  remain  without  fruit  in  Israel,  and  it,  as  we  have 
just  seen  in  the  case  of  Amos,  affords  a  firm  footing  for 
the  prophetic  word.  There  is  abundant  proof  tliat  the 
principles  of  this  legislation  were  acknowledged  in 
Israel.  The  appeal  to  God  as  judge  appears  in  1  Sam. 
ii.  25  ;  the  law  of  blood-revenge  administered,  not  by  a 
central  authority,  but  by  the  family  of  the  deceased, 
occurs  in  2  Sam.  iii.  30,  xiv.  7,  etc. ;  the  altar  is  the 
asylum  in  1  Kings  i.  50,  and  elsewhere ;  the  thief  taken 
in  the  breach  (Exod.  xxii.  2)  is  alluded  to  by  Jer.  ii.  34 ; 
and  so  forth.  The  sacred  ordinances  agree  with  those 
in  the  history,  or,  if  exceptions  are  noted,  they  are  stig- 
matised as  irregular.  The  plurality  of  altars  accords 
with  this  law.  The  annual  feasts — at  least  that  of  the 
autumn,  which  seems  to  have  been  best  observed — are 
often  alluded  to  ;  and  the  night  service  of  commemora- 
tion for  the  exodus  appears  in  Isa.  xxx.  29.  The  rule 
that  the  pilgrim  must  bring  an  offering  was  recognised 
at  Shiloh  (1  Sam.  i.  21).  So,  too,  the  complaint  against 
Eli's  sons  for  their  delay  in  burning  the  fat  is  based  on 
the  same  principle  as  Exod.  xxiiL  18.  The  use  of 
leavened  bread  with  the  sacrifice  is  rebuked  by  Amos 
iv.  5,  and  seems  to  have  had  some  symbolical  signifi- 
cance of  a  purely  Canaanite  character.^' ^  The  prohibition 
to  eat  blood,  which  is  essentially  one  with  the  prohibi- 
tion of  torn  flesh,  is  sedulously  observed  by  Saul,  and 
Saul  also  distinguishes  himself  by  suppressing  witch- 
craft. The  proof  that  this  law  was  known  and  acknow- 
ledged in  all  its  leading  provisions  is  as  complete  as  the 


342  THE  FIRST  lect.  xi. 

proof  that  the  Levitical  law  was  still  unheard  of.  This 
result  confirms,  and  at  the  same  time  supplements,  our 
previous  argument.  We  have  now  brought  the  history 
into  positive  relation  to  one  part  of  the  Pentateuch,  and 
the  critical  analysis  of  the  Books  of  Moses  has  already 
filled  up  one  of  those  breaches  between  law  and  history 
which  the  traditional  view  can  do  nothinp^  to  heaL 


LECT.  XII.  LEGISLA  TION.  343 


LECTUEE  XIL 

THE   DEUTERONOMIC   CODE   AND   THE  LEVITICAL  LAAV. 

In  the  First  Legislation  the  question  of  correct  ritual 
has  little  prominence.  The  simple  rules  laid  down  are 
little  more  than  the  necessary  and  natural  expression 
of  that  principle  which  we  saw  in  Lecture  VI I L  to  be 
the  presupposition  of  the  popular  worship  of  Israel, 
even  when  it  diverged  most  widely  from  the  Levitical 
forms.  Jehovah  alone  is  Israel's  God.  It  is  a  crime, 
analogous  to  treason,  to  depart  from  Him  and  sacrifice 
to  other  gods.  As  the  Lord  of  Israel  and  Israel's  land, 
the  giver  of  all  good  gifts  to  His  people,  He  has  a  mani- 
fest claim  on  Israel's  homage,  and  receives  at  their  hands 
such  dues  as  their  neighbours  paid  to  their  gods,  such 
dues  as  a  king  receives  from  his  people  (comp.  1  Sam. 
viii.  15, 17).  The  occasions  of  homage  are  those  seasons 
of  natural  gladness  which  an  agricultural  life  suggests. 
The  joy  of  harvest  and  vintage  is  a  rejoicing  before  Je- 
hovah, when  the  worshipper  brings  a  gift  in  his  hand, 
as  he  would  do  in  approaching  an  earthly  sovereign, 
and  presents  the  choicest  first-fruits  at  the  altar,  just 
as  his  Canaanite  neighbour  does  in  the  house  of  Laal 
(Jud.  ix.  27).     The  whole  worship  is  spontaneous  and 


344  THE  EIGHTH  lect.  xii. 

natural.  It  has  hardly  the  character  of  a  positive  legis- 
lation, and  its  distinction  from  heathen  rites  lies  less  in 
the  outward  form  than  in  the  different  conception  of 
Jehovah  which  the  true  worshipper  should  bear  in  his 
heart.  To  a  people  which  "  knows  Jehovah,"  this  un- 
ambitious service,  in  which  the  expression  of  grateful 
homage  to  Him  runs  through  all  the  simple  joys  of  a 
placid  agricultural  life,  was  sufficient  to  form  the  visible 
basis  of  a  pure  and  earnest  piety.  But  its  forms  gave 
no  protection  against  deflection  into  heathenism  and 
immorality  when  Jehovah's  spiritual  nature  and  moral 
precepts  were  forgotten.  The  feasts  and  sacrifices  might 
still  run  their  accustomed  round  when  Jehovah  was 
practically  confounded  with  the  Baalim,  and  there  was 
no  more  truth  or  mercy  or  knowledge  of  God  in  the 
land  (Hosea  iv.  1). 

Such,  in  fact,  was  the  state  of  things  in  the  eighth 
century,  the  age  of  the  earliest  prophetic  books.  The 
declensions  of  Israel  had  not  checked  the  outward  zeal 
with  which  Jehovah  was  worshipped.  Never  had  the 
national  sanctuaries  been  more  sedulously  frequented, 
never  had  the  feasts  been  more  splendid  or  the  offerings 
more  copious.  But  the  foundations  of  the  old  life  were 
breaking  up.  The  external  prosperity  of  the  state 
covered  an  abyss  of  social  disorder.  Profusion  and 
luxury  among  the  higher  classes  stood  in  startling  con- 
trast to  the  misery  of  the  poor.  Lawlessness  and  open 
crime  were  on  the  increase.  The  rulers  of  the  nation 
grew  fat  upon  oppression,  but  there  was  none  who  was 


LECT.  XII.  CENTUR  V.  345 

grieved  for  the  wound  of  Joseph.  These  evils  were 
earliest  and  most  acutely  felt  in  the  kingdom  of  Ephraim, 
where  Amos  declares  them  to  be  already  incurable  under 
the  outwardly  prosperous  reign  of  Jeroboam  II.  Witli 
the  downfall  of  Jehu's  dynasty  the  last  bonds  of  social 
order  were  dissolved,  and  the  Assyrian  found  an  easy 
prey  in  a  land  already  reduced  to  practical  anarcliy. 
The  smaller  realm  of  Judah  seemed  at  first  to  show 
more  hopeful  symptoms  (Hosea  iv.  15).  But  the  sepa- 
ration of  the  kingdoms  had  not  broken  the  subtle  links 
that  connected  Judah  with  the  greater  Israel  of  the 
North.  At  all  periods  the  fortunes  and  internal  move- 
ments of  Ephraim  had  powerfully  reacted  on  the  South- 
ern Kingdom.  Isaiah  and  Micah  describe  a  corrup- 
tion within  the  house  of  David  altogether  similar  to 
the  sin  of  Samaria.  "The  statutes  of  Omri  were 
kept,  and  all  the  works  of  the  house  of  Ahab  "  (^licah 
vi.  16). 

The  prominence  which  the  prophets  assign  to  social 
grievances  and  civil  disorders  has  often  led  to  their 
being  described  as  politicians,  a  democratic  Opposition 
in  the  aristocratic  state.  This  is  a  total  misconception. 
The  prophets  of  the  eighth  century  have  no  political 
views,  they  propose  no  practical  scheme  of  political 
readjustment,  and  they  give  only  the  indirectest  hints 
of  the  causes  which  were  so  rapidly  dissolving  the  body 
politic  of  Israel  The  work  of  the  prophets  is  purely 
religious ;  they  censure  what  is  inconsistent  with  the 
knowledge  and  fear  of  Jehovah,  but  see  no  way  of 


346  THE  DECADENCE  lect.  xii. 

remedy  save  in  the  repentance  and  return  to  Him  of 
all  classes  of  society,  after  a  sifting  work  of  judgment 
has  destroyed  the  sinners  of  Jehovah's  people  without 
suffering  one  grain  of  true  wheat  to  fall  to  the  ground 
(Amos  ix.  9  seq^. ;  Isa.  vi.,  etc.).  But  to  the  prophets  the 
observance  of  justice  and  mercy  in  the  state  are  the  first 
elements  of  religion.  The  religious  subject,  the  wor- 
shipping individual,  Jehovah's  son,  was  not  the  indi- 
vidual Israelite,  but  the  nation  qua  nation,  and  the  Old 
Testament  analogue  to  the  peace  of  conscience  which 
marks  a  healthy  condition  of  spiritual  life  in  the  Chris- 
tian was  that  inner  peace  and  harmony  of  the  estates 
of  the  realm  which  can  only  be  secured  where  justice 
is  done  and  mercy  loved.  The  ideal  of  the  prophets  in 
the  eighth  century  is  not  different  from  that  of  the 
First  Legislation.  In  the  old  law  the  worship  of  feasts 
and  sacrifices  is  the  natural  consecration,  in  act,  of  a 
simple,  happy  society,  nourished  by  Jehovah's  good 
gifts  in  answer  to  the  labour  of  the  husbandman,  and 
cemented  by  a  regard  for  justice  and  habits  of  social 
kindliness.  When  the  old  healthy  harmony  of  classes 
was  dissolved,  when  the  rich  and  the  poor  were  no 
longer  knit  together  by  a  kindly  sympathy  and  patri- 
archal bond  of  dependence,  but  confronted  one  another 
as  oppressor  and  oppressed,  when  the  strain  thus  put 
on  all  social  relations  burst  the  weak  bonds  of  outer 
order  and  filled  tlie  land  with  unexpiated  bloodshed,  the 
pretence  of  homage  to  Jehovah  at  His  sanctuary  was 
but  the  crowning  proof  that  Israel  knew  not  his  God. 


LECT.  XII.  OF  ISRAEL,  347 

"  When  ye  spread  forth  your  hands,  I  will  hide  mine 
eyes  from  you ;  yea,  when  ye  make  many  prayers  I  will 
not  hear  :  your  hands  are  full  of  blood"  (Tsa.  i.  15). 

The  causes  of  the  inner  disintegration  of  Israel  were 
manifold,  and  we  cannot  pause  to  examine  them  fully. 
But  in  this,  as  in  all  similar  cases  which  history  ex- 
hibits, the  strain  which  snapped  the  old  bands  of  social 
unity  proceeded  mainly  from  the  effects  of  warlike 
invasion  reacting  on  a  one-sided  progress  in  material 
prosperity,  to  which  the  order  of  the  state  had  not  been 
able  to  readjust  itself.  The  luxury  of  the  higlicr 
classes,  described  by  Amos  and  Isaiah,  shows  that  the 
nobles  of  Israel  were  no  longer  great  farmers,  as  Saul 
and  Nabal  had  been,  living  among  the  peasantry  and 
sharing  their  toil.  The  connection  with  Tyre,  which 
commenced  in  the  days  of  David,  opened  a  profitable 
foreign  market  for  the  agricultural  produce  of  Palestine 
(Ezek.  xxvii.  17),  and  introduced  foreign  luxuries  in 
return.  The  landowners  became  merchants  and  fore- 
stallers  of  grain  (Amos  viiL  5  ;  IIos.  xii.  7).  The  intro- 
duction of  such  a  commerce,  throwing  the  Hebrews  into 
immediate  relations  with  the  great  emporium  of  inter- 
national traffic,  necessarily  led  to  accumulation  of 
wealth  in  a  few  hands,  and  to  the  corresponding  im- 
poverishment of  the  class  without  capital,  as  exportation 
raised  the  price  of  the  necessaries  of  life.  In  times  of 
famine,  or  under  the  distress  wrought  by  prolonged  and 
ferocious  warfare  with  Syria,  the  once  independent 
peasantry  fell  into  the  condition  now  so  universal  in 


348  THE  DECADENCE  lect.  xii. 

the  East.  They  were  loaded  with  debt,  cheated  on  all 
hands,  and  often  had  to  relinquish  their  personal  liberty 
(Amos  ii.  6,  7  ;  Micah  iii.  2  stq^.,  vi.  10  seq^.,  etc.).  The 
order  of  the  state,  entirely  based  on  the  old  precom- 
mercial  state  of  things  when  trade  was  the  affair  of  the 
Canaanites — Canaanite,  in  old  Hebrew,  is  the  word 
for  a  trader — was  not  able  to  adjust  itself  to  the  new 
circumstances.  How  entirely  commercial  avocations 
were  unknown  to  the  old  law  appears  from  the  circum- 
stance that  the  idea  of  capital  is  unknown.  It  is 
assumed  in  Exod.  xxii.  25  that  no  one  borrows  money 
except  for  personal  distress,  and  all  interest  is  conceived 
as  usury  (comp.  Psalm  xv.  5).  In  proportion,  there- 
fore, as  the  nation  began  to  share  the  wealth  and  luxury 
of  the  Canaanite  trading  cities  of  the  coast,  it  divorced 
itself  from  the  old  social  forms  of  the  religion  of 
Jehovah.  The  Canaanite  influence  affected  religion  in 
affecting  the  national  life,  and  it  was  inevitable  that 
the  worship  of  the  sanctuary,  which  had  always  been  in 
the  closest  rapport  with  the  daily  habits  of  the  people, 
should  itself  assume  the  colour  of  Canaanite  luxury 
and  Canaanite  immorality.  This  tendency  was  not 
checked  by  the  extirpation  of  professed  worship  of  the 
Tyrian  Baal.  Jehovah  Himself  in  His  many  shrines 
assumed  the  features  of  the  local  Baalim  of  the  Can- 
aanite sanctuaries,  and  those  horrible  orgies  of  unre- 
strained sensuality,  of  which  we  no  longer  dare  to  speak 
in  unveiled  words,  polluted  the  temples  where  Jeho- 
vah still  reigned  in  name,  and  where  His  help  was 


LECT.  XII.  OF  ISRAEL.  349 

confidently  expected  to  save  Israel  from  Damascus  and 
Assyria. 

The  prophets,  as  I  have  already  said,  never  profess 
to  devise  a  scheme  of  political  and  social  reformation  to 
meet  these  evils.  Their  business  is  not  to  govern,  but 
to  teach  the  nation  to  know  Jehovah,  and  to  lay  bare 
the  guilt  of  every  departure  from  Him.  It  is  for  the 
righteous  ruler  to  determine  how  the  principles  of 
justice,  mercy,  and  God-fearing  can  be  made  practically 
operative  in  society.  Thus  the  criticism  of  the  prophets 
on  established  usages  is  mainly  negative.  The  healing 
of  Israel  must  come  from  Jehovah.  It  is  useless  to 
seek  help  from  political  combinations,  and  it  is  a  mis- 
take to  fancy  that  international  commerce  and  foreign 
culture  are  additions  to  true  happiness.  This  judgment 
proceeds  from  no  theories  of  political  economy.  It 
would  be  a  fallacy  to  cite  the  prophets  as  witness  that 
commerce  and  material  civilisation  are  bad  in  them- 
selves. All  that  they  say  is  that  these  things,  as  they 
found  them  in  their  own  time,  have  undone  Israel,  and 
that  the  first  step  towards  deliverance  must  be  a  judg- 
ment which  sweeps  away  all  the  spurious  show  of 
prosperity  that  has  come  between  Jehovah's  people  and 
the  true  knowledge  of  their  God  (Isa.  ii. ;  Micah  v.). 
Israel  must  again  pass  through  the  wilderness.  All  the 
good  gifts  of  fertile  Canaan  must  be  taken  away  by  a 
desolating  calamity.  Then  the  valley  of  trouble  shall 
again  become  a  gate  of  hope,  and  Jehovah's  covenant 
shall  renew  its  course  on  its  old  principles,  but  with  far 
16 


350  REFORMATION  lect.  xii. 


more  perfect  realisation  (Hos,  ii.).  The  prophetic 
pictures  of  Israel's  final  felicity  are  at  this  tinie  all 
framed  on  the  pattern  of  the  past.  The  days  of  David 
shall  return  under  a  righteous  king  (Micah  v.  2  sc(i.  ; 
Hos.  iii.  5  ;  Isa.  xi.  1  seq?),  and  Israel  shall  realise,  as 
it  had  never  done  in  the  past,  the  old  ideal  of  simple 
agricultural  life,  in  which  every  good  gift  is  received 
directly  from  Jehovah's  hand,  and  is  supplied  by  Him 
in  a  plenty  that  testifies  to  His  perfect  reconciliation 
with  His  people  (Hos.  ii.  21  sec^. ;  Amos  ix.  11  seq, ; 
Micah  iv.  4,  vii.  14  ;  Isa.  iv.  2). 

This  picture  is  ideal.  It  was  never  literally  fulfilled 
to  Israel  in  Canaan,  and  now  that  the  people  of  God 
has  become  a  spiritual  society  dissociated  from  national 
limitations  and  relation  to  the  land  of  Canaan,  it  never 
can  be  fulfilled  save  in  a  spiritual  sense.  The  restora- 
tion of  Israel  to  Palestine  would  be  no  fulfilment  of 
prophecy  now,  for  the  good  things  of  the  land  never  had 
any  other  value  to  the  prophets  than  that  of  an  expres- 
sion of  Jehovah's  love  to  the  people  of  His  choice,  which 
is  now  much  more  clearly  declared  in  Christ  Jesus,  and 
brought  nigh  to  the  heart  by  His  spirit.  But  the  ideal 
supplied  a  practical  impulse.  It  did  not  provide  the 
sketch  of  a  new  legislation  which  could  cure  the  deeper 
ills  of  the  state  without  the  divine  judgment  which  the 
prophets  foretold,  but  it  indicated  evils  that  must  be 
cleared  away,  and  with  wdiich  the  old  divine  laws  were 
unable  to  grapple. 

One  point,  in  particular,  became  thoroughly  plain 


LECT.  XII.  IN  JUDAH.  351 


The  sacrificial  worsliip  was  corrupt  to  the  core,  and 
could  never  again  be  purified  by  the  mere  removal  of 
foreign  elements  from  the  local  high  places.  The  first 
step  towards  reformation  must  lie  in  the  abolition  of 
these  polluted  shrines,  and  to  this  task  the  adherents  of 
the  prophets  addressed  themselves. 

At  this  point  in  the  history  the  centre  of  interest  is 
transferred  from  Ephraim  to  Judah.  In  Ephraim  the 
sanctuaries  perished  with  the  fall  of  the  old  kingdom, 
or  sank,  if  possible,  to  a  lower  depth  in  the  worship  of 
the  mixed  populations  introduced  by  the  conqueror.  In 
Judah  there  was  still  some  hope  of  better  things.  The 
party  of  reform  was  for  a  space  in  the  ascendant 
under  King  Hezekiah,  when  the  miraculous  overthrow 
of  the  Assyrian  vindicated  the  authority  of  the  prophet 
Isaiah  and  justified  his  confident  prediction  that  Jehovah 
would  protect  His  sacred  hearth  on  Mount  Zion.  But 
the  victory  was  not  gained  in  a  moment.  Under 
Manasseh  a  terrible  reaction  set  in,  and  the  corrupt 
popular  religion  crushed  the  prophetic  party,  not  with- 
out bloodshed.  The  truth  was  cast  down,  but  not  over- 
thrown. In  Josiah's  reign  the  tide  of  battle  turned, 
and  then  it  was  that  "the  book  of  the  Torah"  was 
found  in  the  Temple.  Its  words  smote  the  hearts  of 
the  king  and  the  people,  for  though  the  book  had  no 
external  credentials  it  bore  its  evidence  within  itself, 
and  it  was  stamped  with  the  approval  of  the  prophetess 
Huldah.  The  Torah  was  adopted  in  formal  covenant, 
and  on  its  lines, — the  lines  of  the  Deuteronomic  Code, 


352  DEUTERONOMY  AND  lect.  xii. 

as  we  have  already  seen  {supra,  p.  246), — the  reforma- 
tion of  Josiah  was  carried  out. 

The  details  of  the  process  of  reformation  which  cul- 
minated in  the  eighteenth  year  of  Josiah  are  far  from 
clear,  but  a  few  leading  points  can  be  established  with 
precision.  The  central  difference  between  the  Deuter- 
onomic  Code,  on  which  Josiah  acted,  and  the  old  code 
of  the  First  Legislation,  lies  in  the  principle  that  the 
Temple  at  Jerusalem  is  the  only  legitimate  sanctuary. 
The  legislator  in  Deuteronomy  expressly  puts  forth  this 
ordinance  as  an  innovation,  "Ye  shall  not  do,  as  we  do 
here  this  day,  every  man  whatsoever  is  right  in  his  own 
eyes"  (Deut.  xii.  8).  Moreover,  it  is  explained  that 
the  law  which  confines  sacrifice  to  one  altar  involves 
modifications  of  ancient  usage.  If  the  land  of  Israel 
becomes  so  large  that  the  sanctuary  is  not  easily  access- 
ible, bullocks  and  sheep  may  be  eaten  at  home,  as 
game  is  eaten,  without  being  sacrificed,  the  blood  only 
being  poured  on  the  ground.  We  have  already  seen 
that  the  earlier  custom  here  presupposed,  on  which  every 
feast  of  beef  or  mutton  was  sacrificial,  obtained  long 
after  the  settlement  of  Israel  in  Canaan,  on  the  basis  of 
the  principle  of  many  altars  laid  down  in  Exod.  xx.  24, 
and  presupposed  in  the  First  Legislation.  But  further, 
the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  which  reproduces  almost 
every  precept  of  the  older  code,  with  or  without  modi- 
fication, remodels  the  ordinances  which  presuppose  a 
plurality  of  sanctuaries.  According  to  Exod.  xxii.  30, 
the  firstlings  are  to  be  offered  on  the  eighth  day.     This 


LECT.  XII.  THE  HIGH  PLACES.  353 

is  impracticable  under  the  law  of  one  altar ;  and  so  in 
Deut.  XV.  19  seq^.  it  is  appointed  that  they  shall  be 
eaten  year  by  year  at  the  sanctuary,  and  that  meantime 
no  work  shall  be  done  with  the  firstling  bullock,  and 
that  a  firstling  sheep  shall  not  be  shorn.  Again,  the 
asylum  for  the  manslayer  in  Exod.  xxi.  12-14  is 
Jehovah's  altar,  and  so,  in  fact,  the  altar  was  used  in 
the  time  of  David  and  Solomon.  But  under  the  law 
of  Deuteronomy  there  are  to  be  three  fixed  cities  of 
refuge  (Deut.  xix.  1  seq}). 

The  law,  then,  is  quite  distinctly  a  law  for  the 
abolition  of  the  local  sanctuaries,  as  they  are  recognised 
by  the  First  Legislation,  and  had  been  frequented  under 
it  without  offence  during  many  centuries  in  the  land  of 
Canaan.  The  reason  for  the  change  of  law  comes  out 
in  Deut.  xii.  2  seq.  The  one  sanctuary  is  ordained  to 
prevent  assimilation  between  Jehovah-worship  and  the 
Canaanite  service.  The  Israelites  in  the  eighth  century 
did  service  on  the  hill-tops  and  under  the  green  trees 
(Hos.  iv.  13  ;  Isa.  i.  29),  and  in  these  local  sanctuaries 
practically  merged  their  Jehovah-worship  in  the  abomi- 
nations of  the  heathen.  The  Deuteronomic  law  designs 
to  make  such  "syncretism"  henceforth  impossible  by 
separating  the  sanctuary  of  Jehovah  from  all  heathen 
shrines.  And  so,  in  particular,  the  old  marks  of  a 
sanctuary,  the  maqqeba  and  ashera  (supra,  p.  226),  which 
had  been  used  by  the  patriarchs,  and  continued  to 
exist  in  sanctuaries  of  Jehovah  down  to  the  eighth 
century,  are  declared  illegitimate  (Deut.  xvi.  21  ;  Josh. 


354  ISAIAH  AND  lect.  xii. 

xxiv.  26;  1  Sam.  vi.  14,  vii.  12;  2  Sam.  xx.  8 ;  1 
Kings  i.  9  ;  Hosea  iii.  4 ;  1  Kings  vii.  21).  This  de- 
tail is  one  of  the  clearest  proofs  that  Deuteronomy  was 
unknown  till  long  after  the  days  of  Moses.  How  could 
Joshua,  if  he  had  known  such  a  law,  have  erected  a 
maggeba  or  sacred  pillar  of  unhewn  stone  under  the 
sacred  tree  by  the  sanctuary  at  Shechem?  Nay,  this 
law  was  still  unknown  to  Isaiah,  who  attacks  idolatry, 
but  recognises  maggeba  and  altar  as  the  marks  of  the 
sanctuar^^  of  Jehovah.  "In  that  day,"  he  says,  pro- 
phesying the  conversion  of  Egypt,  "there  shall  be  an 
altar  to  Jehovah  within  the  land  of  Egypt,  and  a 
maggeba  at  the  border  thereof  to  Jehovah"  (Isa.  xix.  19). 
Isaiah  could  not  refer  to  a  forbidden  symbol  as  a  maggeba 
to  Jehovah.  He  takes  it  for  granted  that  Egypt,  when 
converted,  will  serve  Jehovah  by  sacrifice  (ver.  21),  and 
do  so  under  the  familiar  forms  which  Jehovah  has  not 
yet  abrogated. 

This  passage  gives  us  a  superior  limit  for  the  date 
of  the  Deuteronomic  Code.  It  was  not  known  to 
Isaiah,  and  therefore  the  reforms  of  Hezekiah  cannot 
have  been  based  upon  it.  Indeed  the  prophets  of  the 
eighth  century,  approaching  the  problem  of  true  worship, 
not  from  the  legal  and  practical  side,  but  from  the 
religious  principles  involved,  never  get  so  far  as  to 
indicate  a  detailed  plan  for  the  reorganisation  of  the 
sanctuaries.  Micah  proclaims  God's  wrath  against  the 
maggebas  and  asheras;  but  they  perish  in  the  general  fall 
of  the  cities  of  Judah  with  all  their  corrupt  civilisation 


LECT.  XII.  THE  HIGH  PLACES.  355 

(Micah  V.  10  8cq^.  Even  Jerusalem  and  the  Temple  of 
Zion  must  share  the  general  fate  (chap.  iii.  12).  Such 
a  prediction  offers  no  occasion  for  a  plan  of  reformed 
worship.  In  the  prophecies  of  Isaiah  again,  where  the 
ma^^eba  is  still  recognised  as  legitimate,  the  idols  of 
the  Judoean  sanctuaries  are  viewed  as  the  chief  element 
in  the  nation's  rebellion,  and  the  mark  of  repentance  is 
to  cast  them  away  (Isa.  xxx.  22,  xxxi.  6  scq.,  ii.  7,  20). 
It  does  not  seem  impossible  that  Isaiah  would  have 
been  content  with  this  reform,  for  he  never  proclaims 
war  against  the  local  sanctuaries  as  he  does  against 
their  idols.  He  perceives  indeed  that  not  only  the 
idols  but  the  altars  come  between  Israel  and  Jehovah, 
and  lead  the  people  to  look  to  the  work  of  their  own 
hands  instead  of  to  their  Maker  (Isa.  xvii.  7  seq).  Yet 
even  here  the  contrast  is  not  between  one  altar  and 
many,  but  between  the  material  and  man-made  sanctu- 
ary and  the  Holy  One  of  Israel.  The  prophetic  thought 
seems  to  hesitate  on  the  verge  of  transition  to  the 
spiritual  worship  of  the  New  Covenant.  But  tlie  time 
was  not  yet  ripe  for  so  decisive  a  change.  J>^ 

To  Isaiah,  Jehovah's  presence  with  His  people  is 
still  a  local  thing.  It  could  not,  indeed,  be  otherwise, 
for  the  people  of  Jehovah  was  itself  a  conception  geo- 
graphically defined,  bound  up  with  the  land  of  Canaan, 
and  having  its  centre  in  Jerusalem.  In  the  crisis  of 
the  Assyrian  wars,  the  fundamental  religious  thought 
that  Jehovah's  gracious  purpose,  and  therefore  Jehovah's 
people,  are  indestructible,  took  in  Isaiah's  mind  the 


355  THE  HOLINESS  lect.  xii. 

definite  form  of  an  assurance  that  Jerusalem  could  not 
fall  before  the  enemy.  "  Jehovah  hath  founded  Zion, 
and  the  poor  of  his  people  shall  trust  in  it "  (Isa. 
xiv.  32).  Jehovah,  who  hath  his  fire  in  Zion,  and  his 
furnace  in  Jerusalem,  will  protect  his  holy  mountain, 
hovering  over  it  as  birds  over  their  nest  (Isa.  xxxi.  5,  9). 
Zion  is  the  inviolable  seat  of  Jehovah's  sovereignty, 
where  He  dwells  as  a  devouring  fire,  purging  the  sin  of 
His  people  by  consuming  judgment,  but  also  asserting 
His  majesty  against  all  invaders  (Isa.  xxxiii.  13  scc[., 
iv.  4  seq}).  Tliis  conception  is  nowhere  specially  con- 
nected with  the  Temple.  Eather  is  it  the  wdiole  plateau 
of  Zion  (chap.  iv.  5)  which  is  the  seat  of  Jehovah's  pre- 
sence with  His  people.  But,  according  to  the  whole 
manner  of  thought  in  the  Old  Testament,  the  seat  of 
Jehovah's  presence  to  Israel,  the  centre  from  which  His 
Torah  goes  forth  (Isa.  ii.  3),  the  mountain  of  Jehovah 
and  Jehovah's  house  (Isa.  xxx.  29,  ii.  2),  the  hearth  of 
God  {Ariel,  Isa.  xxix.  1),  the  place  of  solemn  and  festal 
assembly  (Isa.  iv.  5,  xxxiii.  20),  must  be  the  place  of 
accej)table  sacrifice,  if  sacrifice  is  to  continue  at  all. 
Isaiah,  perhaps,  was  not  concerned  to  draw  this  infer- 
ence. His  thoughts  were  rather  full  of  the  spiritual 
side  of  Jehovah's  presence  to  His  people,  the  word  of 
revelation  guiding  their  path  (xxx.  20,  21),  the  privilege 
of  dwelling  unharmed  in  the  fire  of  Jehovah's  presence, 
and  seeing  the  King  in  His  glory,  which  belongs  to  the 
man  that  walketh  in  righteousness,  and  speaketh  up- 
right w^ords  ;    who  despiseth  the  gain  of  oppression, 


LECT,  XT  I.  OF  ZION.  357 

shaking  his  hands  from  the  holding  of  bribes,  stopping 
his  ears  from  the  hearing  of  blood,  and  shutting  his 
eyes  from  looking  on  evil  (xxxiii.  14  seq^).  But  a  prac- 
tical scheme  of  reformation,  resting  on  these  premisses, 
and  deriving  courage  from  the  fulfilment  of  Isaiah's 
promise  of  deliverance,  could  hardly  fail  to  aim  at  the 
unification  of  worship  in  Jerusalem.  Hezekiah  may  at 
first  have  sought  only  to  purge  the  sanctuaries  of  idols. 
But  the  whole  worship  of  these  shrines  was  bound  up 
with  their  idolatrous  practices,  while  the  Temple  on 
Zion,  the  sanctuary  of  the  ark,  might  well  be  purged  of 
heathenish  corruptions,  and  still  retain  in  this  ancient 
Mosaic  symbol  a  mark  of  Jehovah's  presence  palpable 
enough  to  draw  the  homage  even  of  the  masses  who  had 
no  ears  for  the  lofty  teaching  of  Isaiah.  The  history  in- 
forms us  that  Hezekiah  actually  worked  in  this  direction. 
We  cannot  tell  the  measure  of  his  success,  for  what  he 
effected  was  presently  undone  by  Manasseh ;  but,  at 
least,  it  was  under  him  that  the  problem  first  took  prac- 
tical shape. 

It  is  very  noteworthy,  and,  on  the  traditional  view, 
quite  inexplicable,  that  the  Mosaic  sanctuary  of  the 
ark  is  never  mentioned  in  the  Deuteronomic  Code. 
The  author  of  this  law  occupies  the  standpoint  of 
Isaiah,  to  whom  the  whole  plateau  of  Zion  is  holy ;  or 
of  Jeremiah,  who  forbids  men  to  search  for  the  ark  or 
remake  it,  because  Jerusalem  is  the  throne  of  Jehovah 
(Jer.  iii.  16,  IV).  But  he  formulates  Isaiah's  doctrine 
in  the  line  of  Hezekiah's  practical  essay  to  suppress  the 


358  THE  OLD  lect.  xii. 

high  places,  and  he  develops  a  scheme  for  fuller  and 
effective  execution  of  this  object  with  a  precision  of  de- 
tail that  shows  a  clear  sense  of  the  practical  difficulties 
of  the  undertaking.  It  was  no  light  thing  to  overturn 
the  whole  popular  worship  of  Judah.  It  is  highly 
probable  that  Hezekiah  failed  to  produce  a  permanent 
result  because  he  had  not  duly  provided  for  the  prac- 
tical difficulties  to  which  his  scheme  would  give  rise. 
The  Deuteronomic  Code  has  realised  these  difficulties, 
and  meets  the  most  serious  of  them  by  the  modifications 
of  the  old  law  already  discussed,  and  by  making  special 
provision  for  the  priests  of  the  suppressed  shrines. 

The  First  Legislation  has  no  law  of  priesthood,  no 
provision  as  to  priestly  dues.  The  permission  of  many 
altars,  which  it  presupposes,  is  given  in  Exodus  xx. 
24-26  in  a  form  that  assumes  the  right  of  laymen  to 
ofter  sacrifice, ^^^  as  we  actually  find  them  doing  in  so 
many  parts  of  the  history  {supra,  p.  264).  Yet  a  closer 
observation  shows  that  the  old  law  presupposes  a  priest- 
hood, whose  business  lies  less  with  sacrifice  than  with 
the  divine  Torah  w^hich  they  administer  in  the 
sanctuary  as  successors  of  Moses.  For  the  sanctuary  is 
the  seat  of  judgment  {supra,  p.  334),  and  this  implies 
a  qualified  personnel  through  whom  judgment  is  given. 
According  to  the  unanimous  testimony  of  all  the  older 
records  of  the  Old  Testament,  this  priesthood,  charged 
with  the  Torah  administered  at  the  sanctuary,  is  none 
other  than  the  house  of  Levi,  the  kinsmen  or  descend- 
ants of  Moses,  who  already  in  his  time  were  the  body- 


LECT.  XII.  PRIESTHOOD.  359 

guard  of  the  ark,  and  so  the  guardians  of  the  sanctuary 
at  wliich  lie  dispensed  Divine  judgments.  (See 
especially  Deuteronomy  xxxiii.  8 ;  1  Samuel  ii.  27  sc*/.). 
The  history  of  the  Levites  after  the  Conquest  is  veiled 
in  much  obscurity.  The  principal  branch  of  the  family, 
which  remained  with  the  ^rk,  is  known  to  us  as  the 
house  of  Eli,  which  lost  its  supremacy  in  fulfilment  of 
the  prophecy  in  1  Samuel  ii.,  wdien  Solomon  deposed 
Abiathar  and  set  Zadok  in  his  place  (1  Kings  ii.  26, 
27).  According  to  the  prophecy  just  alluded  to,  Zadok 
did  not  belong  to  the  priestly  family  originally  chosen 
by  Jehovah,  but  he  was  the  head  of  a  body  of  Levites 
(2  Samuel  xv.  24).  Another  Levitical  family  which 
claimed  direct  descent  from  Moses  held  the  priesthood 
of  the  sanctuary  of  Dan,  and  in  the  later  times  of  the 
kingdom  all  the  priests  of  local  sanctuaries  w^ere  viewed 
as  Levites.  Whether  this  implies  that  they  were  all 
lineal  descendants  of  the  old  house  of  Levi  may  well  be 
doubted.  But  in  early  times  guilds  are  hereditary 
bodies,  modified  by  a  right  of  adoption,  and  it  was  un- 
derstood that  the  priesthood  ran  in  the  family  to  which 
Moses  belonged.  In  the  time  of  Ezekiel  the  Jerusalem 
priesthood  consisted  of  the  Levites  of  the  guild  of 
Zadok.  The  subordinate  ministers  of  the  Temple  were 
not  Levites,  but,  as  we  have  already  seen,  the  foreign 
janissaries,  and  presumably  other  foreign  slaves,  the 
progenitors  of  the  Kdhinim,  who  appear  in  the  list  of 
returning  exiles  in  Ezra  ii.  with  names  for  the  most 
part  not  Israelite.      The  Levites  who  are  not  Zadokites 


360  DEUTERONOMY  AND  lect.  xii. 

are  by  Ezekiel  expressly  identified  with  the  priests  of 
the  high  places  (Ezek.  xliv.  9  seg.;  supra,  p.  249  and 
note).  These  historical  facts — for  they  are  no  con- 
jecture, but  the  express  testimony  of  the  sacred  record 
— are  presupposed  in  the  Code  of  Deuteronomy.  The 
priests,  according  to  Deuteronomy  xxl  5,  are  the  sons 
of  Levi ;  "for  them  hath  Jehovah  thy  God  chosen  to 
minister  to  him  and  to  bless  in  his  name,  and  accord- 
ing to  their  decision  is  every  controversy  and  every 
stroke."  Deuteronomy  knows  no  Levites  who  cannot  be 
priests,  and  no  priests  who  are  not  Levites.  The  two 
ideas  are  absolutely  identical  But  these  Levites, 
w^ho  are  priests  of  Jehovah's  own  appointment,  were,  in 
the  period  when  the  code  was  composed,  scattered 
through  the  land  as  priests  of  the  local  sanctuaries. 
They  had  no  territorial  possessions  (Deut.  xviii.  1), 
and  were  viewed  as  Gerim,  or  strangers  under  the 
protection  of  the  community  in  the  places  where  they 
sojourned  (verse  6).  Apart  from  the  revenues  of  the 
sanctuary,  their  position  was  altogether  dependent 
(xiv.  27,  29,  Q%c)P 

In  the  abolition  of  the  local  sanctuaries  it  was 
necessary  to  make  provision  for  these  Levites.  And  this 
the  new  code  does  in  two  ways  :  it  provides,  in  the  first 
place,  that  any  Levite  from  the  provinces  who  chooses 
to  come  up  to  Jerusalem  shall  be  admitted  to  equal 
privileges  with  his  brethren  the  Levites  who  stand 
there  before  Jehovah — not  to  the  privilege  of  a  servant 
in  the  sanctuary,  but  to  the  full  priesthood,  as  is  ex- 


LECT.  XII.  THE  LEVITES,  361 

pressly  conveyed  by  the  terms  used.  Thus  ministeriDg, 
he  receives  for  his  support  an  equal  share  of  the  priestly 
dues  paid  in  kind  (Deut.  xviii.  6  scc[).  Those 
Levites,  on  the  other  hand,  who  remain  dispersed 
through  the  provinces  receive  no  emolument  from  the 
sanctuary,  and,  having  no  property  in  land  (xviii.  1), 
have  a  far  from  enviable  lot,  which  the  legislator 
seeks  to  mitigate  by  recommending  them  in  a  special 
manner,  along  with  the  widow  and  the  orphan,  to  the 
charity  of  the  landed  classes  under  whose  protec- 
tion they  dwell  (xii.  12,  18;  xiv.  27,  29;  xvi.  11,  14; 
XX vi.  11  sec[).  The  method  of  such  charity  is  to 
some  extent  defined.  Once  in  three  years  every 
farmer  is  called  upon  to  store  up  a  tithe  of  the 
produce  of  his  land,  which  he  retains  in  his  own 
hands,  but  must  dispense  to  the  dependents  or  Levites 
who  come  and  ask  a  meal.  The  legislator,  it  is  plain, 
aims  at  something  like  a  voluntary  poor-rate.  The 
condition  of  the  landless  class,  with  whose  sufferings 
the  prophets  are  so  often  exercised,  had  become  a  social 
problem,  owing  to  the  increase  of  large  estates  and 
other  causes  (Isa.  v.  8 ;  Micah  ii.),  and  demands  a 
remedy;  but  it  is  not  proposed  to  enforce  the  assess- 
ment through  the  executive.  The  matter  is  left  to 
every  man's  conscience  as  a  religious  duty,  of  which 
he  is  called  to  give  account  before  Jehovah  in  the 
sanctuary  (xxvi.  12  5c^.).  And  tlie  bond  between 
charity  and  religion  is  drawn  stiU  closer  by  the  pro- 
vision that  the  well-to-do  landholder,  when  he  comes 


362  DEUTERONOMY  NOT  lect.  xii. 

vip  to  the  sanctuary  to  make  merry  before  God,  feasting 
on  the  firstlings,  tithes,  etc.,  must  bring  with  him  his 
dependents  and  the  Levite  who  is  within  his  gates, 
that  they  too  may  have  their  part  in  the  occasions  of 
religious  joy.  This  law  of  charity  appears  to  supersede 
the  old  rule  of  leaving  the  produce  of  every  field  to  the 
poor  one  year  in  seven,  which  is  obviously  a  more 
primitive  and  less  practical  arrangement.  In  place 
of  this,  the  Deuteronomic  Code  requires  that,  at  the 
close  of  every  seven  years,  there  shall  be  a  release  of 
Hebrew  debtors  by  their  creditors  (xv.  1  seq?). 

I  return  to  the  Levites,  in  order  to  point  out  that 
the  comparison  of  Deut.  xviii.  with  2  Kings  xxiii.  8 
sGg.  effectually  disproves  the  idea  of  some  critics  that 
the  Deuteronomic  Code  was  a  forgery  of  the  temple 
priests,  or  of  their  head,  the  high  priest  Hilkiah.  The 
proposal  to  give  the  Levites  of  the  provinces — that  is, 
the  priests  of  the  local  sanctuaries — equal  priestly  rights 
at  Jerusalem  could  not  commend  itself  to  the  temple 
hierarchy.  And  in  this  point  Josiah  was  not  able  to 
carry  out  the  ordinances  of  the  book.  The  priests  who 
were  brought  up  to  Jerusalem  received  support  from 
the  temple  dues,  but  were  not  permitted  to  minister  at 
the  altar.  This  proves  that  the  code  did  not  emanate 
from  Hilkiah  and  the  Zadokite  priests,  whose  class 
interests  were  strong  enough  to  frustrate  the  law  which, 
on  the  theory  of  a  forgery,  was  their  own  work. 

Whence,  then,  did  the  book  derive  the  authority 
which  made   its   discovery  the  signal  for  so  great  a 


LECT.  XII.  FORGED  BY  HILKIAII.  3G3 

reformation  1  How  did  it  approve  itself  as  an  expres- 
sion of  the  Divine  will,  first  to  Hilkiah  and  Josiah,  and 
then  to  tlie  whole  nation  ?  To  this  question  there  can 
be  but  one  answer.  The  authority  that  lay  behind 
Deuteronomy  was  the  power  of  the  prophetic  teaching 
which  half  a  century  of  persecution  had  not  been  able 
to  suppress.  After  the  work  of  Isaiah  and  his  fellows, 
it  was  impossible  for  any  earnest  movement  of  reforma- 
tion to  adopt  other  principles  than  those  of  the  pro- 
phetic word  on  which  Jehovah  Himself  had  set  His 
seal  by  the  deliverance  from  Assyria.  What  the  Deu- 
teronomic  code  supplied  was  a  clear  and  practical 
scheme  of  reformation  on  the  prophetic  lines.  It 
showed  that  it  was  possible  to  adjust  the  old  religious 
constitution  in  conformity  with  present  needs,  and  this 
was  enough  to  kindle  into  new  flame  the  slumbering 
fire  of  the  word  of  the  prophets.  The  book  became  the 
programme  of  Josiah's  reformation,  because  it  gathered 
up  in  practical  form  the  results  of  the  great  movement 
under  Hezekiah  and  Isaiah,  and  the  new  divine  teach- 
ing then  given  to  Israel.  It  was  of  no  consequence  to 
Josiah — it  is  of  equally  little  consequence  to  us — to 
know  the  exact  date  and  authorship  of  the  book.  Its 
prophetic  doctrine,  and  the  practical  character  of  the 
scheme  which  it  set  forth — in  which  the  new  teaching 
and  the  old  Torah  were  fused  into  an  intelligible  unity 
— were  enough  to  commend  it. 

The  law  of  the  one  sanctuary,  which  is  aimed  against 
assimilation   of  Jehovah -worship   to  the   religion    of 


364  HOLINESS  OF  lect.  xii. 

Canaan,  and  seeks  entirely  to  separate  the  people  from 
tlie  worship  of  Canaanite  shrines,  is  only  one  expression 
of  a  thought  common  to  the  prophets,  that  the  unique 
religion  of  Jehovah  was  in  constant  danger  from  inter- 
course between  Israel  and  the  nations.  Isaiah  com- 
plains that  the  people  were  always  ready  to  "strike 
hands  with  the  children  of  strangers,"  and  recognises  a 
chief  danger  to  faith  in  the  policy  of  the  nobles,  who 
were  dazzled  with  the  splendour  and  courted  the  alliance 
of  the  great  empires  on  the  Nile  and  the  Tigris  (Isa. 
ii.  6,  XXX.  1  seq. ;  compare  Hosea  vii.  8,  viii.  9,  xiv.  3). 
The  vocation  of  Israel  as  Jehovah's  people  has  no  points 
of  contact  with  the  aims  and  political  combinations  of 
the  surrounding  nations,  and  Micah  looks  forward  to  a 
time  when  Israel  shall  be  like  a  flock  feeding  in  solitude 
in  the  woods  of  Bashan  or  Carmel.  Isaiah  expresses 
this  unique  destiny  of  Israel  in  the  word  holiness. 
Jehovah  is  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  and  conversely  His 
true  people  are  a  holy  seed.  The  notion  of  holiness  is 
primarily  connected  with  the  sanctuary  and  acts  of 
worship.  The  old  Israelite  consecrated  himself  before  a 
sacrifice.  In  the  First  Legislation  the  notion  of  Israel's 
holiness  appears  only  in  the  law  against  eating  flesh 
torn  in  the  field,  of  which  the  blood  had  not  been  duly 
offered  to  God  on  His  altar.  But  Isaiah  raises  the 
notion  beyond  the  sphere  of  ritual,  and  places  Israel's 
holiness  in  direct  relation  to  the  personal  presence  of 
Jehovah  on  Zion  in  the  centre  of  His  people  as  their 
living  Sanctuary,  whose  glory  fills  aU  the  earth  (Isa. 


LECT.  XII.  ISRAEL.  365 

VL  3,  iv.  3  seq^.  The  Code  of  Deuteronomy  appropriates 
this  principle  ;  but  in  its  character  of  a  law,  seeking 
definite  practical  expression  for  religious  principles,  it 
develops  the  idea  of  unique  holiness  and  separation 
from  the  profane  nations  in  prohibitive  ordinances. 
The  essential  object  of  the  short  law  of  the  kingdom 
(xvii  14  seq^  is  to  guard  against  admixture  with 
foreigners  and  participation  in  foreign  policy.  Other 
precepts  regulate  contact  with  the  adjoining  nations 
(xxiii.  3  se^'.),  and  a  vast  number  of  statutes  are  directed 
against  the  immoralities  of  Canaanite  nature-worship, 
which,  as  we  know  from  the  prophets  and  the  books  of 
Kings,  had  deeply  tainted  the  service  of  Jehovah.  Not 
a  few  details,  which  to  the  modern  eye  seem  trivial  or 
irrational,  disclose  to  the  student  of  Semitic  antiquity 
an  energetic  protest  against  the  moral  grossness  of 
Canaanite  heathenism.  These  precepts  give  the  law  a 
certain  air  of  ritual  formalism,  but  the  formalism  lies 
only  on  the  surface,  and  there  is  a  moral  idea  below. 
The  ceremonial  observances  of  Deuteronomy  are  inver- 
sions of  heathen  usages.  A  good  example  lies  in  the 
list  of  forbidden  foods.  We  know  as  a  fact  that  some 
of  the  unclean  animals  were  sacramentally  eaten  in 
certain  heathen  rituals  (Tsa.  Ixvi.  17,  Ixv.  4,  Ixvi.  3),  and 
in  general  the  rules  as  to  eating  and  not  eating  certain 
animals  among  the  heathen  Semites,  as  in  other  primi- 
tive nations,  were  directly  connected  with  the  worship 
of  animal  deities,  the  totems  of  certain  races  or  families. 
The  worship  of  unclean  animals  is  mentioned  in  Ezekiel 


366  CIVIL  LA  WS 


viii.  10,  11,  in  a  form  that  indicates  the  existence  of 
family  totems  within  Israel;  and  it  is  impossible  to 
doubt  that  the  laws  of  clean  and  unclean  beasts  are 
aimed  at  heathen  usages  connected  with  this  worship. 
Just  so  our  own  prejudice  against  the  use  of  horse  flesh 
is  a.  relic  of  an  old  ecclesiastical  prohibition  framed  at 
the  time  when  the  eating  of  such  food  was  an  act  of 
worship  to  Odin/^^ 

This  constant  polemical  reference  to  Canaanite  wor- 
ship and  Canaanite  morality  gives  to  the  element  of 
ritual  and  forms  of  worship  a  much  larger  place  in 
Deuteronomy  than  these  things  hold  in  the  First  Legis- 
lation. In  points  of  civil  order  the  new  law  still  moves 
on  the  old  lines.  Its  object  is  not  legislative  innova- 
tion, but  to  bring  the  old  consuetudinary  law  into 
relation  to  the  fundamental  principle  that  Jehovah  is 
Israel's  Lawgiver,  and  that  all  social  order  exists  under 
His  sanction. 

Thus  we  still  find  some  details  which  bear  the 
stamp  of  primeval  Semitic  culture.  In  chap.  xxi.  10 
scg.  we  have  marriage  by  capture  as  it  was  practised  by 
the  Arabs  before  Mohammed,  and  even  the  detail  as  to 
the  paring  of  the  nails  of  the  captive  before  marriage  is 
identical  with  one  of  the  old  Arabic  methods  of  break- 
ing widowhood. 

But  in  general  we  see  that  the  civil  laws  of  Deutero- 
nomy belong  to  a  later  stage  of  society  than  the  First 
Legislation.  For  example,  the  law  of  retaliation,  which 
has  so  large  a  range  in  the  First  Legislation,  is  limited 


LECT.  XII.  IN  DEUTERONOMY.  3G7 

in  Deut  xix.  16  5c^.  to  the  case  of  false  witness.  And 
with  this  goes  the  introduction  of  a  new  punishment, 
which,  in  the  old  law,  w^as  confined  to  slaves.  A  man 
who  injures  another  may  be  brought  before  the  judge 
and  sentenced  to  the  bastinado  (xxv.  1  seq^).  The  intro- 
duction of  this  degrading  punishment  in  the  case  of 
freemen  indicates  a  change  in  social  feeling.  Among 
the  Bedouins  no  sheikh  would  dare  to  flog  a  man,  for  he 
would  thereby  bring  himself  under  the  law  of  retali- 
ation; and  so  it  was  in  Israel  in  the  old  time.  But 
Eastern  kingship  breaks  down  this  sense  of  personal 
independence,  while,  at  the  same  time,  it  modifies  the 
strict  law  of  revenge.  In  general,  the  executive  system 
of  Deuteronomy  is  more  advanced.  The  sanctuary  is 
still  the  highest  seat  of  law,  but  the  priest  is  now  asso- 
ciated with  a  supreme  civil  judge  (xvii.  9, 12),  who  seems 
to  be  identical  with  the  king ;  and  even  the  subordi- 
nate judges  are  not  merely  the  natural  sheikhs,  or  elders 
of  the  local  communities,  but  include  officers  appointed 
with  national  authority  (xvi.  18).  Again,  the  law  of 
manumission  undergoes  an  important  modification.  On 
the  old  law  a  father  could  sell  his  daughter  as  a  slave, 
and  the  bondwoman  was  absolute  property  ;  the  master 
could  wed  her  to  one  of  his  servants,  and  retain  her 
when  the  servant  left.  In  Deuteronomy  all  this  has 
disappeared,  and  a  Hebrew  woman  has  a  right  to  manu- 
mission after  seven  years,  like  a  man  (xv.  12,  17).  A 
similar  advance  in  woman's  rights  appears  in  the  change 
on  the  law  of  seduction.     By  the  old  law  this  case  was 


368  CIVIL  LA  WS  lect.  xii. 

treated  as  one  of  pecuniary  loss  to  the  father,  who  must 
be  compensated  by  the  seducer  purchasing  the  damsel  as 
wife  for  the  full  price  (mohar)  of  a  virgin.  In  Deutero- 
nomy the  law  is  removed  from  among  the  laws  of  pro- 
perty to  laws  of  moral  purity,  and  the  payment  of  full 
mohar  is  changed  to  a  fixed  fine  (Exod.  xxii  16,  17; 
Deut.  xxii.  28  seq). 

In  other  cases  the  new  code  softens  the  rudeness  of 
ancient  custom.  In  Arabic  warfare  the  destruction  of 
an  enemy's  palm-groves  is  a  favourite  exploit,  and  fertile 
lands  are  thus  often  reduced  to  desert.  In  2  Kings 
iii.  19  we  find  that  the  same  practice  was  enjoined  on 
Israel  by  the  prophet  Elisha  in  war  with  Moab  ;  every 
good  tree  was  to  be  cut  down.  But  Deut.  xx.  19  seq. 
forbids  this  barbarous  destruction  of  fruit-trees.  Still 
more  remarkable  is  the  law  of  Deut.  xxii.  30.  It  was  a 
custom  among  many  of  the  ancient  Arabs  that  a  man 
took  possession  of  his  father's  wives  along  with  the  pro- 
perty (his  own  mother,  of  course,  excepted).  The  only 
law  of  forbidden  degrees  in  the  Deuteronomic  Code  is 
directed  against  this  practice,  which  Ezekiel  xxii.  10 
mentions  as  still  current  in  Jerusalem.  But  in  early 
times  such  marriages  were  made  without  offence.  The 
Israelites  understood  Absalom's  appropriation  of  David's 
secondary  wives  as  a  formal  way  of  declaring  that  his 
father  was  dead  to  him,  and  that  he  served  himself  his 
heir  (2  Sam.  xvi.) ;  and  when  Adonijah  asked  the  hand 
of  Abishag,  Solomon  understood  him  as  claiming  the 
inheritance  (1  Kings  ii.).     The  same  custom  explains 


LECT.  XII.  IN  DE  UTERONOM  V.  36!) 

the  anger  of  Ishbosheth  at  Abner  (2  Sam.  iii.  7).  The 
new  code,  you  perceive,  marks  a  growth  in  morality 
and  refinement ;  it  is  still  no  ideal  law  fit  for  all  time, 
but  a  practical  code  largely  incorporating  elements  of 
actual  custom.  But  the  growth  of  custom  and  usage  is 
on  the  whole  upward,  and  ancient  social  usages  which 
survived  for  many  centuries  after  the  age  of  Josiah 
among  the  heathen  of  Arabia  and  Syria  already  lie 
behind  the  Deuteronomic  Code.  With  all  the  hardness 
of  Israel's  heart,  the  religion  of  Jehovah  had  proved 
itself  in  its  influence  on  the  nation  a  better  religion 
than  that  of  the  Baalim. ^^^ 

From  Josiah's  covenant  to  the  fall  of  the  Jewish 
state  the  Code  of  Deuteronomy  had  but  a  generation  to 
run.  Even  in  this  short  time  it  appeared  that  the 
reformation  had  not  accomplished  its  task,  and  that  the 
introduction  of  the  written  law  was  not  enough  to  avert 
the  judgment  which  the  prophets  had  declared  inevit- 
able for  the  purification  of  the  nation.  The  crusade 
against  the  high  places  was  most  permanent  in  its 
results.  In  the  time  of  Jeremiah  popular  superstition 
clung  to  the  Temple  as  it  had  formerly  clung  to  the 
high  places,  and  in  the  Temple  the  populace  and  the 
false  prophets  found  the  pledge  that  Jehovah  could 
never  forsake  His  nation.  This  fact  is  easily  under- 
stood. The  prophetic  ideas  of  Isaiah,  which  were  the 
real  spring  of  the  Deuteronomic  reformation,  had  never 
been  spiritually  grasped  by  the  mass  of  the  people, 
though  the  eclat  attending  the  overthrow  of  Sennacherib 


370  JEREMIAH  AND  lect.  xii. 

had  given  tliem  a  certain  currency.  The  conception  of 
Jehovah's  throne  on  Zion  was  materialised  in  the 
Temple,  and  the  moral  conditions  of  acceptance  with 
the  King  of  Zion,  on  which  Isaiah  laid  so  much  weight, 
were  forgotten.  Jehovah  received  ritual  homage  in  lieu 
of  moral  obedience  ;  and  Jeremiah  has  again  occasion 
to  declare  that  the  latter  alone  is  the  positive  content 
of  the  divine  Torah,  and  that  a  law  of  sacrifice  is  no 
part  of  the  original  covenant  with  Israel.  In  speaking 
thus  the  prophet  does  not  separate  himself  from  the 
Deuteronomic  law ;  for  the  moral  precepts  of  that  code 
— as,  for  example,  the  Deuteronomic  form  of  the  law  of 
manumission  (Jer.  xxxiv.  13-16) — he  accepts  as  part 
of  the  covenant  of  the  Exodus.  To  Jeremiah  therefore 
the  Code  of  Deuteronomy  does  not  appear  in  the  light 
of  a  positive  law  of  sacrifice ;  and  this  judgment  is 
undoubtedly  correct.  The  ritual  details  of  Deuter- 
onomy are  directed  against  heathen  worship ;  they  are 
negative,  not  positive.  In  the  matter  of  sacrifice  and 
festal  observances  the  new  code  simply  diverts  the  old 
homage  of  Israel  from  the  local  sanctuaries  to  the  central 
shrine,  and  all  material  offerings  are  summed  np  under 
the  principles  of  gladness  before  Jehovah  at  the  great 
agricultural  feasts,  and  of  homage  paid  to  Him  in 
acknowledgment  that  the  good  things  of  the  land  of 
Canaan  are  His  gift  (xxvi.  10).  The  firstlings  and  the 
first-fruits  and  tithes  remain  on  their  old  footing  as 
natural  expressions  of  devotion,  which  did  not  begin 
with  the  Exodus  and  are  not  peculiar  to  Israel.     Even 


LECT.  XII.  DEUTERONOMY,  371 

the  festal  sacrifices  retain  the  character  of  "  a  voluntary 
tribute "  (Dent.  xvi.  10),  and  the  paschal  victim  itself 
may  be  chosen  indifferently  from  the  flock  or  the  herd 
(xvi.  2),  and  is  still,  according  to  the  Hebrew  of  xvi.  7, 
presumed  to  be  boiled,  not  roasted,  as  is  the  case  in  all 
old  sacrifices  of  which  the  history  speaks.  Deuter- 
onomy knows  nothing  of  a  sacrificial  priestly  Torah, 
though  it  refers  the  people  to  the  Torah  of  the  priests 
on  the  subject  of  leprosy  (xxiv.  8),  and  acknowledges 
their  authority  as  judges  in  lawsuits.  In  the  Deuter- 
onomic  Code  the  idea  of  sin  is  never  connected  with 
matters  of  ritual.  A  sin  means  a  crime,  an  offence  to 
law  and  justice  (xix.  15,  xxi.  22,  xxii.  26,  xxiv.  16), 
an  act  of  heathenism  (xx.  18),  a  breach  of  faith  tow^ards 
Jehovah  (xxiii.  21,  22),  or  a  lack  of  kindliness  to  the 
poor  (xxiv.  15).  And  such  offences  are  expiated,  not 
by  sacrifice,  but  by  punishment  at  the  hand  of  man  or 
God.  This  moral  side  of  the  law,  which  exactly  corre- 
sponds to  prophetic  teaching,  continued  to  be  neglected 
in  Judah.  Oppression,  bloodshed,  impurity,  idolatry, 
filled  the  land ;  and  for  these  things  Jeremiah  threatens 
a  judgment,  which  the  Temple  and  its  ritual  can  do 
nothing  to  avert  (Jer.  vii.), 

In  all  this  Deuteronomy  and  Jeremiah  alike  still 
stand  outside  the  priestly  Torah.  As  far  as  Deuter- 
onomy goes,  this  is  usually  explained  by  saying  that  it 
is  a  law  for  the  people,  and  does  not  take  up  points 
of  ritual  which  specially  belonged  to  the  priests.  But 
the  code,  which  refers  to  the  priestly  law  of  leprosy,  says 


372  RITUAL  TORAH  lect.  xii 

nothing  of  ordinances  of  ritual  atonement  and  stated 
sacrifice,  and  Jeremiah  denies  in  express  terms  that  a 
law  of  sacrifice  forms  any  part  of  the  divine  commands 
to  Israel.  The  priestly  and  prophetic  Torahs  are  not 
yet  absorbed  into  one  divine  system. 

Nevertheless  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  there  was 
at  this  time  a  ritual  Torah  in  the  hands  of  the  priests, 
containing  elements  which  the  prophets  and  the  old 
codes  pass  by.  In  the  time  of  Ahaz  there  was  a  daily 
burnt  offering  in  the  morning,  a  stated  meat  offering 
in  the  evening  (2  Kings  xvi.  15).  There  was  also  an 
atoning  ritual.  In  the  time  of  Jehoash  the  atonements 
paid  to  the  priests  were  pecuniary — a  common  enough 
thing  in  ancient  times.  But  atoning  sacrifice  was  also 
of  ancient  standing.  It  occurs  in  1  Sam.  iiL  14, — "  The 
guilt  of  the  house  of  Eli  shall  not  be  wiped  out  by 
sacrifice  or  oblation  for  ever."  The  idea  of  atonement 
in  the  sacrificial  blood  must  be  very  ancient,  and  a 
trace  of  it  is  found  even  in  the  book  of  Deuteronomy 
in  the  curious  ordinance  which  provides  for  the  atone- 
ment (wiping  out)  of  the  blood  of  untraced  homicide  by 
the  slaughter  of  a  heifer.  Along  with  these  things  we 
find  ancient  ordinances  of  ceremonial  holiness  in  the 
sanctuary  at  Nob  (1  Sam.  xxi.  4),  and  all  this  necessarily 
supposes  a  ritual  law,  the  property  of  the  priests.  Only, 
we  have  already  seen  that  the  details  still  preserved  to 
us  of  the  temple  ritual  are  not  identical  with  the  full 
Levitical  system.  They  contained  many  germs  of  that 
system,  but  they  also  contained  much  that  was  radically 


LECT.  XII.  IN  THE  TEMPLE.  373 

different.  And  in  particular  the  Temple  worship  itself 
was  not  stringently  differentiated  from  everything 
lieathenish,  as  appears  with  the  utmost  clearness  in 
the  admission  of  uncircumcised  foreigners  to  certain 
ministerial  functions,  in  the  easy  way  in  which  Isaiah's 
friend  Urijah  accepted  the  foreign  innovations  of  King 
Ahaz,  and  in  the  fact  that  prophets  whom  Jeremiah 
regards  as  heathen  diviners  still  continued  to  be  attached 
to  the  Temple  up  to  the  last  days  of  the  state,  while 
worshippers  from  Samaria  made  pilgrimages  to  Jerusa- 
lem with  heathenish  ceremonies  expressly  forbidden  in 
Deuteronomy  as  well  as  in  Leviticus  (Jer.  xli.  5  ;  Lev. 
xix.  27,  28 ;  Deut.  xiv.  i ;  Isa.  xv.  2).  AVe  see,  then, 
that  even  Josiah's  reformation  left  many  things  in  the 
Temple  which  savoured  of  heathenism,  and  the  presence 
of  the  priests  of  the  high  places  was  little  calculated  to 
improve  the  spirituality  of  the  observances  of  Jehovah's 
house.  In  all  this  there  was  a  manifest  danger  to  true 
religion.  If  ritual  and  sacrifice  were  to  continue  at  all, 
it  was  highly  desirable  that  some  order  should  be  taken 
with  the  priestly  ritual,  and  an  attempt  made  to  re- 
organise it  in  conformity  with  the  prophetic  conception 
of  Jehovah's  moral  holiness.  But  no  effort  to  complete 
Josiah's  work  in  this  direction  seems  to  have  been  made 
in  the  last  troublous  years  of  Jerusalem.  On  the  con- 
trary, Ezekiel  describes  the  grossest  heathenism  as 
practised  at  the  Temple,  doubtless  not  without  the 
countenance  of  the  priests  (Ezek.  viii.). 

The  Temple  and  its  worship  fell  with  the  destruc- 

ir 


374  EZEKIEUS  lect.  xii. 

tion  of  the  city,  fourteen  years  later,  Ezekiel,  dwelling 
iu  captivity,  had  a  vision  of  a  new  Temple,  a  place  of 
worship  for  repentant  Israel,  and  heard  a  voice  com- 
manding him  to  lay  before  the  people  a  pattern  of  re- 
modelled worship.  "  If  they  be  ashamed  of  all  that 
they  have  done,  show  them  the  form  of  the  house  .  .  .  and 
all  its  ordinances,  and  all  the  Torahs  thereof:  and  write 
them  before  them  that  they  may  keep  all  the  form 
thereof,  and  all  the  ordinances  thereof,  and  do  them  " 
(Ezek.  xliii.  10,  11). 

A  great  mystery  has  been  made  of  this  law  of 
Ezekiel,  but  the  prophet  himself  makes  none.  He 
says  in  the  clearest  words  that  the  revelation  is  a 
sketch  of  ritual  for  the  period  of  restoration,  and  again 
and  again  he  places  his  new  ordinances  in  contrast  with 
the  actual  corrupt  usage  of  the  Eirst  Temple  (xliii.  7, 
xliv.  5,  se^.,  xlv.  8,  9).  He  makes  no  appeal  to  a  pre- 
vious law  of  ritual.  The  whole  scheme  of  a  written 
law  of  the  house  is  new,  and  so  Ezekiel  only  confirms 
Jeremiah,  who  knew  no  divine  law  of  sacrifice  under 
the  First  Temple.  It  is  needless  to  rehearse  more  than 
the  chief  points  of  Ezekiel's  legislation.  The  first  that 
strikes  us  is  the^  degradation  of  the  Levites.  The 
ministers  of  the  old  Temple,  he  tells  us,  were  uncircum- 
cised  foreigners,  whose  presence  was  an  insult  to 
Jehovah's  sanctuary.  Such  men  shall  no  more  enter 
the  house,  but  in  their  place  shall  come  the  Levites 
not  of  the  house  of  Zadok,  who  are  to  be  degraded  from 
the   priesthood  because  they  officiated   in   old   Israel 


LECT.  xii.  TO  RAH.  375 

before  the  idolatrous  shrines  (xliv.  5  s<?^.).  This  one 
point  is  sufficient  to  fix  the  date  of  the  Levitical  law  as 
later  than  Ezekiel.  In  all  the  earlier  history,  and  in 
the  Code  of  Deuteronomy,  a  Levite  is  a  priest,  or  at 
least  qualified  to  assume  priestly  functions  ;  and  even 
in  Josiah's  reformation  the  Levite  priests  of  the  high 
places  received  a  modified  priestly  status  at  Jerusalem. 
Ezekiel  knows  that  it  has  been  so  in  the  past ;  but  he 
declares  that  it  shall  be  otherwise  in  the  future,  as  a 
punishment  for  the  offence  of  ministering  at  the  idola- 
trous altars.  He  knows  nothing  of  an  earlier  law,  in 
which  priests  and  Levites  are  already  distinguished,  in 
which  the  office  of  Levite  is  itself  a  high  privilege 
(Num.  xvi.  9). 

A  second  point  in  Ezekiel's  law  is  a  provision  for 
stated  and  regular  sacrifices.  These  sacrifices  are  to  be 
provided  by  the  prince,  who  in  turn  is  to  receive  from 
the  people  no  arbitrary  tax,  but  a  fixed  tribute  in  kind 
upon  all  agricultural  produce  and  flocks.  Here  again 
we  see  a  reference  to  pre-Exilic  practice,  when  the 
Temple  was  essentially  the  king's  sanctuary,  and  the 
stated  offerings  were  his  gift.  In  the  old  codes  the  people 
at  large  are  under  no  obligation  to  do  stated  sacrifice. 
That  was  the  king's  voluntary  offering,  and  so  it  was  at 
first  after  the  Exile.  The  early  decrees  of  Pei^sian 
monarchs  ii^  favour  ot  the  Jews  provide  for  regular 
sacrifice  at  the  king's  expense  (Ezra  vi.  9,  vii.  17) ;  and 
only  at  the  convocation  of  Nehemiah  do  the  people 
agree   to   defray   the   stated   offering  by  a  voluntary 


376  EZEKIELS  lect.  xii. 

charge  of  a  third  of  a  shekel  (Neh.  x.  32).  It  is  dis- 
puted whether,  in  Exod.  xxx.  16,  "the  service  of  the 
tabernacle,"  defrayed  by  the  fixed  tribute  of  half  a 
shekel,  refers  to  the  continual  sacrifices.  If  it  does  so, 
this  law  was  still  unknown  to  Nehemiah,  and  must  be  a 
late  addition  to  the  Pentateuch.  If  it  does  not,  it  is  still 
impossible  that  the  Levitical  ordinance  of  stated  offer- 
ings could  have  preceded  the  existence  of  a  provision 
for  supplying  them.  Again  we  are  brought  back  to 
Jeremiah's  words.  The  stated  sacrifices  were  not  pre- 
scribed in  the  wilderness. 

A  third  point  in  Ezekiel's  law  is  the  prominence 
given  to  the  sin  offering  and  atoning  ritual.  The  altar 
must  be  purged  with  sin  offerings  for  seven  consecutive 
days  before  burnt  sacrifices  are  acceptably  offered  on  it 
(xliii  18  seq}).  The  Levitical  law  (Exod.  xxix.  36,  37) 
prescribes  a  similar  ceremony,  but  with  more  costly 
victims.  At  the  dedication  of  Solomon's  Temple,  on  the 
contrary  (1  Kings  viii.  62),  the  altar  is  at  once  assumed 
to  be  fit  for  use,  in  accordance  with  Exod.  xx.  24,  and 
with  all  the  early  cases  of  altar  building  outside  the 
Pentateuch.  But,  besides  this  first  expiatory  ceremonial, 
Ezekiel  appoints  two  atoning  services  yearly,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  first  and  the  seventh  month  (xlv.  19, 
20,  LXX.),  to  purge  the  house.  This  is  the  first  appear- 
ance, outside  of  the  Levitical  code,  of  anything  cor- 
responding to  the  great  day  of  atonement  in  the  seventh 
month,  and  it  is  plain  that  the  simple  service  in 
Ezekiel  is   still  far   short  of  that   solemn   ceremony. 


LECT.  XII.  TORAH.  317 


The  day  of  atonement  was  also  a  fast  day.  Now,  in 
Zech.  vii.  5,  viii.  19,  the  fast  of  the  seventh  month  is 
alluded  to  as  one  of  the  four  fasts  commemorating  the 
destruction  of  Jerusalem,  which  had  been  practised  for 
the  last  seventy  years.  The  fast  of  the  seventh  month 
was  not  yet  united  with  the  "  purging  of  the  house  " 
ordained  by  Ezekiel.  Even  in  the  great  convocation  of 
Neh.  viii.-x.,  where  we  have  a  record  of  proceedings 
from  the  first  day  of  the  seventh  month  onwards  to 
the  twenty-fourth,  there  is  no  mention  of  the  day  of  ex- 
piation on  the  tenth,  which  thus  appears  as  the  very 
last  stone  in  the  ritual  edifice. 

I  pass  over  other  features  of  Ezekiel's  legislation. 
The  detailed  proof  that  in  every  point  Ezekiel's  Torali 
prepares  the  way  for  the  Levitical  law  but  represents  a 
more  elementary  ritual  may  be  read  in  the  text  itself 
with  the  aid  of  Smend's  Commentaiy.  The  whole 
scheme  presents  itself  with  absolute  clearness  as  a  first 
sketch  of  a  written  priestly  Torah,  resting  not  on  the 
law  of  Moses  but  on  old  priestly  usage,  and  reshaped  so  as 
to  bring  the  ordinances  of  the  house  into  due  conformity 
with  the  holiness  of  Jehovah  in  the  sense  of  the  pro- 
phets and  the  Deuteronomic  Code.  The  thought  that 
underlies  Ezekiel's  code  is  clearly  brought  out  in  xliii. 
7  seq.  To  Ezekiel,  who  is  himself  a  priest,  the  whore- 
dom of  Israel,  their  foul  departure  from  Jehovah  after 
filthy  idols,  appears  in  a  peculiarly  painful  liglit  in  con- 
nection with  the  service  of  the  sanctuary,  the  throne  of 
Jehovah,  the  place  of  the  soles  of  His  feet,  where  He 


378  PRINCIPLE  OF  lect.  xir. 

dwells  in  the  midst  of  Israel  for  ever.  In  time  past  the 
people  of  Israel  have  defiled  Jehovah's  name  by  their 
abominations,  and  for  this  they  have  suffered  His  wrath. 
The  new  law  is  a  gift  to  the  people  on  their  repentance 
— a  scheme  to  protect  them  from  again  falling  into  like 
sins.  The  spontaneous  unregulated  character  of  the  old 
service  gave  room  for  the  introduction  of  heathen 
abominations.  The  new  service  shall  be  reduced  to  a 
divine  rule,  leaving  no  door  for  what  is  unholy.  But 
so  long  as  worship  takes  place  with  material  ceremonies 
in  an  earthly  sanctuary,  the  idea  of  holiness  cannot  be 
divested  of  a  material  element.  Erom  the  earliest  times 
tlie  holiness  of  God's  worship  had  regard  to  provisions 
of  physical  purity,  especially  to  lustrations  and  prin- 
ciples of  cleanness  and  uncleanness,  which  in  their  origin 
sprang  from  natural  feelings  of  propriety,  but  gradually 
became  more  complex,  as  we  find  them  in  Deuteronomy, 
from  the  desire  to  exclude  all  that  savoured  of  heathen 
grossness.  From  the  priestly  point  of  view,  material 
and  moral  observances  of  sanctity  run  into  one.  Ezekiel 
finds  equal  fault  with  idolatry  in  the  Temple  and  with 
the  profanation  of  its  plateau  by  the  sepulchres  of  the 
kings  (xliii.  7).  And  so  his  ritual,  though  its  funda- 
mental idea  is  moral,  branches  out  into  a  variety  of 
ordinances  which,  from  our  modern  point  of  view,  seem 
merely  formal,  but  which  were  yet  inevitable  unless  the 
principle  of  sacrifice  and  an  earthly  sanctuary  was  to  be 
altogether  superseded.  If  the  material  sanctuary  was 
to  be  preserved  at  all,  the  symbolic  observances  of  its 


LECT.  XII.  EZEKIEDS  TORAH.  379 

holiness  must  be  made  stringent,  and  to  this  end  the 
new  ordinance  of  the  Levites  and  Ezekiel's  other  pro- 
visions were  altogether  suitable 

In  proportion,  now,  as  the  whole  theory  of  worship 
is  remodelled  and  reduced  to  rule  on  the  scheme  of  an 
exclusive  sanctity,  Avhich  presents,  so  to  speak,  an  armed 
front  to  every  abomination  of  impure  heathenism,  the 
ritual  becomes  abstract,  and  the  services  remote  from 
ordinary  life.  In  the  old  worship  all  was  spontaneous. 
It  was  as  natural  for  an  Israelite  to  worship  Jehovah, 
as  for  a  Moabite  to  worship  Chemosh.  To  worship  God 
was  a  holiday,  an  occasion  of  feasting.  Eeligion,  in  its 
sacrificial  form,  was  a  part  of  common  life,  which  no 
one  deemed  it  necessary  to  reduce  to  rule.  Even  in 
Deuteronomy  this  view  predominates.  The  sacrificial 
feasts  are  still  the  consecration  of  natural  occasions  of 
joy ;  men  eat,  drink,  and  make  merry  before  God. 
The  sense  of  God's  favour,  not  the  sense  of  sin,  is  what 
rules  at  the  sanctuary.  But  the  unification  of  the 
sanctuary  already  tended  to  break  up  this  old  type  of 
religion.  Worship  ceased  to  be  an  everyday  thing, 
and  so  it  ceased  to  be  the  expression  of  everyday 
religion.  In  Ezekiel  this  change  has  produced  its 
natural  result  in  a  change  of  the  whole  standpoint  from 
which  he  views  the  service  of  the  Temple.  The  offer- 
in  cjs  of  individuals  are  no  lonoer  the  chief  reason  for 
which  the  Temple  exists..  AU  weight  lies  on  the  stated 
service,  which  the  prince  provides  out  of  national  funds, 
and  which  is,  as  it  were,  the  representative  service  of 


380  RELIGION  AFTER  lect.  xii. 

Israel.  The  individual  Israelite  who,  in  the  old  law, 
stood  at  the  altar  himself  and  brought  his  own  victim, 
is  now  separated  from  it,  not  only  by  the  double  cordon 
of  priests  and  Levites,  but  by  the  fact  that  his  personal 
offering  is  thrown  into  the  background  by  the  stated 
national  sacrifice. 

The  whole  tendency  of  this  is  to  make  personal 
religion  more  and  more  independent  of  offerings.  The 
emotion  with  which  the  worshipper  approaches  the 
Second  Temple,  as  recorded  in  the  Psalter,  has  little  to 
do  with  sacrifice,  but  rests  rather  on  the  fact  that  the 
whole  wondrous  history  of  Jehovah's  grace  to  Israel  is 
vividly  and  personally  realised  as  he  stands  amidst  the 
festal  crowd  at  the  ancient  seat  of  God's  throne,  and 
adds  his  voice  to  the  swelling  song  of  praise.  The  daily 
religion  of  the  Eestoration  found  new  forms.  The  Scrip- 
tures, the  synagogue,  the  practice  of  prayer  elsewhere 
than  before  the  altar,  were  all  independent  of  the  old 
idea  of  worship,  and  naturally  prepared  the  way  for  the 
New  Testament.  The  narrowing  of  t]ie  privilege  of 
access  to  God  at  the  altar  would  have  been  a  retrograde 
step  if  altar- worship  had  still  remained  the  form  of  all 
religion.  But  this  was  not  so,  and  therefore  the  new 
ritual  was  a  practical  means  of  separating  personal 
religion  from  forms  destined  soon  to  pass  away.  The 
very  features  of  the  Levitical  ordinances  which  seem 
most  inconsistent  with  spirituality,  if  we  place  them 
in  the  days  of  Moses,  when  all  religion  took  shape 
before  the  altar,  appear  in  a  very  different  light  in  the 


LECT.  XII.  THE  EXILE,  381 

age  after  the  Exile,  when  the  non-ritual  religion  of  the 
prophets  went  side  by  side  with  the  Law,  and  supplied 
daily  nourishment  to  the  spiritual  life  of  those  who 
were  far  from  the  sanctuary. 

With  all  this  there  went  another  change  not  less  im- 
portant in  the  way  of  preparation  for  the  work  of  our 
Lord.  In  the  old  ritual,  sacrifice  and  offering  were 
essentially  an  expression  of  homage,  and  the  element 
of  atonement  held  a  very  subsidiary  place.  But  the 
idea  of  sacrificial  homage  lost  great  part  of  its  force  when 
the  sacrifices  of  the  sanctuary  were  so  much  divorced 
from  individual  life,  and  became  a  sort  of  abstract  re- 
presentative worship.  In  Ezekiel,  and  still  more  in  the 
Levitical  legislation,  the  element  of  atonement  takes  a 
foremost  place.  The  sense  of  sin  had  grown  deeper 
under  the  teaching  of  the  prophets,  and  amidst  the 
proofs  of  Jehovah's  anger  that  darkened  the  last  days 
of  the  Jewish  state.  Sin  and  forgiveness  were  the  main 
themes  of  prophetic  discourse.  The  problem  of  accept- 
ance with  God  exercised  every  thoughtful  mind,  as  we 
see  not  only  from  the  Psalms  and  the  prophets  of  the 
Exile  and  Restoration,  but  above  aU  from  the  book  of 
Job,  which  is  certainly  later  than  the  time  of  Jeremiah. 
The  acceptance  of  the  worship  of  the  sanctuary  had 
always  been  regarded  as  the  visible  sacrament  of  Jeho- 
vah's acceptance  of  the  worshipper,  "  when  He  came  to 
him  and  blessed  him."  And  now  more  than  in  any 
former  time,  the  first  point  in  acceptance  was  felt  to  be 
the  forgiveness  of  sin,  and  the  weightiest  element  in  the 


382  THE  LEVITICAL  lect.  xir. 

ritual  was  that  which  symbolised  the  atonemeut  or 
*' wiping  out"  of  iniquity.  The  details  of  this  symbol- 
ism cannot  occupy  us  here.  It  is  enough  to  indicate 
in  one  word  that  the  ritual  of  atoning  sacrifice  was  so 
shaped  by  Divine  wisdom  that  it  supplied  to  the  New 
Testament  a  basis  intelligible  to  the  Hebrew  believers 
for  the  explanation  of  the  atoning  work  of  Christ.  Not 
indeed  that  the  blood  of  bulls  and  goats  ever  took  away 
sin.  The  true  basis  of  forgiveness,  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment as  in  the  New,  lies,  not  in  man's  offering,  but  in  a 
work  of  sovereign  love.  It  is  Jehovah,  for  His  own 
name's  sake,  who  blots  out  Israel's  transgressions  and 
will  not  remember  his  sin.  But  the  atoning  ritual  ever 
held  before  the  people's  eyes  the  mysterious  connection 
of  forgiving  love  with  awful  justice,  and  pointed  by  its 
very  inadequacy  to  the  need  for  a  better  atonement  of 
Jehovah's  own  providing.^^^ 

The  Levitical  legislation  in  our  present  Pentateuch 
is  the  practical  adaptation^  of  these  principles  to  the 
circumstances  of  the  Second  Temple,  when  Jerusalem 
was  no  longer  the  seat  of  a  free  state,  but  only  the 
centre  of  a  religious  community  possessing  certain 
municipal  privileges  of  self-government.  Its  distinctive 
features  are  all  found  in  Ezekiel's  Torah — the  care  with 
which  the  Temple  and  its  vicinity  are  preserved  from 
the  approach  of  unclean  things  and  persons,  the  cor- 
responding institution  of  a  class  of  holy  ministers  in 
the  person  of  the  Levites,  the  greater  distance  thus 
interposed  between  the  people  and  the  altar,  the  con- 


LECT.  XII.  LEGISLATION.  383 

centration  of  sacrifice  in  the  two  forms  of  stated  repre- 
sentative offerings  (the  tamul)  and  atoning  sacrifices. 
In  all  these  points,  as  we  have  seen,  the  usage  of  the 
Law  is  in  distinct  contrast  to  that  of  the  First  Temple, 
where  the  temple  plateau  was  polluted  by  the  royal 
sepulchres,  where  the  servants  of  the  sanctuary  were 
uncircumcised  foreigners,  the  stated  service  the  affair  of 
the  king,  regulated  at  will  by  him  (2  Kings  xvi.),  and  the 
atoning  offerings  essentially  fines  paid  to  the  priests  of 
the  sanctuary  (2  Kings  xii.  16).  That  Ezekiel  in  these 
matters  speaks,  not  merely  as  a  priest  recording  old 
usage,  but  as  a  prophet  ordaining  new  Torah  with 
Divine  authority,  is  his  own  express  claim,  and 
appears  in  the  clearest  way  in  the  degradation  of 
the  non  -  Zadokite  priests,  which  is  actually  carried 
out  in  the  Levitical  legislation,  with  the  natural 
consequence  that,  on  the  return  from  captivity,  very 
few  Levites  in  comparison  wdth  the  full  priests  cared  to 
attach  themselves  to  the  temple  (Neh.  vii.  39,  seq.).^*'^ 

The  development  of  the  details  of  the  system  falls 
therefore  between  the  time  of  Ezekiel  and  the  work  of 
Ezra ;  and  the  circumstance  already  referred  to,  that  the 
culminating  and  most  solemn  ceremony  of  the  great 
day  of  expiation  was  not  observed  in  the  year  of  Ezra's 
covenant,  shows  that  the  last  touches  were  not  added  to 
the  ritual  until,  through  Ezra's  agency,  it  was  put  into 
practical  operation.  But,  while  the  historical  student 
is  thus  compelled  to  speak  of  the  ritual  code  as  the  law 
of  the  Second  Temple,  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to 


384  OLD  AND  NEW  lect.  xii. 

think  of  it  as  altogether  new.  Ezekiel's  ordinances  are 
nothing  else  than  a  reshaping  of  the  old  priestly  Torah, 
and  a  close  study  of  the  Levitical  laws,  especially  in 
Lev.  xviL-xxvi.,  shows  that  many  ancient  Torahs  were 
worked  up,  by  successive  processes,  into  the  complete 
system  as  we  now  possess  it.  In  Lev.  xxiv.  19  seq^.,  for 
example,  we  find  the  old  law  of  retaliation  for  injuries 
not  mortal,  which  is  already  obsolete  in  the  Deuter- 
onomic  Code.  The  preservation  of  such  a  Torah  shows 
that  the  priests  did  not  give  up  their  old  traditional 
law  for  the  written  Code  of  Deuteronomy.  They 
doubtless  continued  till  the  time  of  Ezra  to  give  oral 
Torahs,  as  we  see  from  Haggai  i.  11.  The  ana- 
logy of  all  early  law  makes  this  procedure  quite  intel- 
ligible to  us.  Nothing  is  more  common  than  to  find  an 
antique  legislation  handed  dQwn  in  the  mouth  of  a 
priestly  or  legal  guild  in  certain  set  forms  of  words. 

To  trace  out  in  detail  how  much  of  the  Levitical 
legislation  consists  of  such  old  Torahs  handed  down 
from  time  immemorial  in  the  priestly  families,  and  how 
much  is  new,  is  a  task  which  we  cannot  now  attempt, 
and  which  indeed  has  not  yet  been  finally  accomplished 
by  scholars.  The  chief  interest  of  this  inquiry  lies  in 
its  bearing  on  the  early  history  of  Israel.  It  is  for  the 
historian  to  determine  how  far  the  Levitical  law  is  mere 
law,  of  which  we  can  say  no  more  than  that  it  was  law 
for  the  Second  Temple,  and  how  far  it  is  also  history 
which  can  be  used  in  describing  the  original  sanctuary 
of  the  ark  in  the  days  of  Moses.     But  in  following  out 


LECT.  XII.  TORAHS.  385 

this  inquiry  we  cannot  assume  that  every  law  which  is 
called  a  law  of  Moses  was  meant  to  be  understood  as 
literally  given  in  the  wilderness.  For  it  is  a  familiar 
fact  that  in  the  early  law  of  all  nations  necessary  modi- 
fications on  old  law  are  habitually  carried  out  by  means 
of  what  lawyers  call  legal  fictions.  This  name  is  some- 
what misleading ;  for  a  legal  fiction  is  no  deceit,  but  a 
convention  which  all  parties  understand.  But  it  is 
found  more  convenient  to  present  the  new  law  in  a 
form  which  enables  it  to  be  treated  as  an  integral  part 
of  the  old  legislation.  Thus  in  Eoman  jurisprudence 
all  law  was  supposed  to  be  derived  from  the  Laws  of 
the  Twelve  Tables  (Maine,  Ancient  Law,  p.  33  seq)^ 
just  as  in  Israel  all  law  was  held  to  be  derived  from 
the  teaching  of  Moses.  In  neither  case  was  any  false- 
hood meant  or  conveyed.  The  whole  object  of  this 
way  of  treating  the  law  was  to  maintain  the  continuity 
of  the  legal  system.  But  legal  fiction  has  much  more 
curious  developments.  In  old  English  law  many  writs 
give  a  quite  imaginary  history  of  the  case,  alleging,  for  ex- 
ample, that  the  plaintiff  is  the  king's  debtor,  and  cannot 
pay  his  debts  by  reason  of  the  default  of  the  defendant. 
This  instance  is  not  directly  parallel  to  anything  in  the 
Old  Testament ;  but  it  shows  how  impossible  it  would 
be  to  explain  any  system  of  ancient  law  on  the  assump- 
tion that  every  statement  which  seems  to  be  plain 
narrative  of  fact  is  actually  meant  to  be  so  taken.  It 
would  be  the  highest  presumption  to  affirm  that  what 
is  found  in  all  other  ancient  laws  cannot  occur  in  the  Old 


386  LEGAL  lect.  xii. 

Testament.  The  very  universality  of  these  conventions 
shows  that  in  certain  stages  of  society  they  form  the 
easiest  and  most  intelligible  way  of  introducing  neces- 
sary modifications  of  law ;  and  the  Israelites  had  the 
same  habits  of  thought  with  other  primitive  nations, 
and  doubtless  required  to  be  taught  and  to  think  things 
out  on  the  same  lines.  In  our  state  of  society  legal 
fictions  are  out  of  date  ;  in  English  law  they  have  long 
been  mere  antiquarian  lumber.  But  Israel's  law  was 
given  for  the  practical  use  of  an  ancient  people,  and 
required  to  take  the  forms  which  we  know  as  a  matter 
of  fact  to  be  those  wliich  primitive  nations  best  under- 
stand. 

If  we  find,  then,  by  actual  comparison  of  different 
parts  of  Scripture,  that  some  points  of  law  and  ceremony 
are  related  in  historical  form,  as  if  based  on  Mosaic  pre- 
cedent, but  that  there  is  other  evidence,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  march  from  Sinai  {swpra,  p.  319),  that  the  thing 
did  not  happen  so  in  Moses's  own  time,  we  have  not 
hit  on  a  self-contradiction  in  the  Bible,  but  only  on  a 
case  of  legal  convention  ;  for  one  well-known  type  of 
this  is  to  relate  a  new  law  in  the  form  of  an  ancient 
precedent.  Let  me  illustrate  this  by  an  example  from 
Sir  H.  Maine's  Village  Communities,  p.  110.  In  India, 
when  tha  Government  brings  a  new  water  supply  into 
a  village,  the  village  authorities  make  rules  for  its  use 
and  distribution  ;  but  "  these  rules  do  not  purport  to 
emanate  from  the  personal  authority  of  their  author  or 
authors ;  there  is  always  a  sort  of  fiction  under  which 


LECT.  xii.  FICTIONS.  387 


some  customs  as  to  the  distribution  of  water  are  supposed 
to  have  existed  from  all  antiquity,  although,  in  fact,  no 
artificial  supply  had  been  even  so  much  as  thought  of." 
In  the  same  way  the  new  laws  of  the  Levitical  code  are 
presented  as  ordinances  of  Moses,  though,  when  they 
were  first  promulgated,  every  one  knew  that  they  wxre 
not  so, — though  Ezra  himself  speaks  of  some  of  them  as 
ordinances  of  the  prophets. 

A  peculiarly  clear  case  of  this  occurs  in  the  law  of 
war.  According  to  1  Sam.  xxx.  24,  25,  the  standing 
law  of  Israel  as  to  the  distribution  of  booty  was  enacted 
by  David,  and  goes  back  only  to  a  precedent  in  his 
war  with  the  Amalekites  who  burned  Ziklag.  In  the 
priestly  legislation  the  same  law  is  given  as  a  Mosaic 
precedent  from  the  war  with  Midian  (Num.  xxxi.  27).^'^ 

To  the  indolent  theologian  the  necessity  of  dis- 
tinguishing between  these  quasi-historical  precedents, 
which  were  meant  to  be  taken  only  as  laws,  and  the 
actual  history,  which  was  meant  to  be  taken  literally, 
is  naturally  unwelcome  ;  but  to  the  diligent  and  rever- 
ent student  it  affords  the  key  for  the  solution  of  many 
difficulties,  and  the  natural  removal  of  contradictions, 
which,  on  the  current  exegesis,  present  a  constant 
etumblingblock  to  faith. 


NOTES  AND  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


Lecture  L 

KoTE  1,  p.  7. — According  to  Origen,  Princip.,  Bk.  iv.  p.  173, 
the  literal  sense  of  Scripture  is  often  impossible,  absurd,  or 
immoral, — and  this  designedly,  lest,  cleaving  to  the  letter  alone, 
men  should  remain  at  a  distance  from  the  dogmata,  and  learn 
nothing  worthy  of  God.  Augustine  in  his  hermeneutical  treatise, 
De  Dodrina  Christiana  (Bk.  iii.  c.  1 0),  teaches  that  "  "V^Tiatever 
has  no  proper  bearing  on  the  rule  of  life  or  the  verity  of  faith 
must  be  recognised  as  figurative."  A  good  example  of  the 
practical  application  of  these  principles  will  be  found  in  the 
preface  to  Jerome's  Commentary  on  Hosea, 

Note  2,  p.  13. — See,  in  particular,  the  first  part  of  the 
Freiheit  eines  Christenmenschenj  and  the  preface  to  Luther's 
German  Bible.  On  Tetzel  see  Freiheit  des  liermons  vom  Ahlass 
(Werhe,  ed.  Irmischer,  vol.  xx\di.  p.  13).  Compare  Calvin's 
Institution  Bk.  iii.  chap.  2 — "  The  Word  itself,  however  it  be 
conveyed  to  us,  is  like  a  mirror  in  which  faith  beholds  God." 

Note  3,  p.  1 7. — The  Old  Testament  writers  possessed  Hebrew 
sources  now  lost,  such  as  the  Book  of  the  Wars  of  the  Lord,  the 
Book  of  Jashar,  and  the  Annals  of  the  Kings  of  Israel  and 
Judah.  But  Josephus,  and  other  profane  historians  whose  writ- 
ings are  still  extant,  had  no  authentic  Hebrew  sources  for  the 
canonical  history,  except  those  preserved  in  the  Bible. 

Within  the  last  few  years  the  decipherment  of  the  monu- 
ments of  Assyria  and  Babylonia  has  supplied  contemporary 
evidence  as  to  the  relations  of  the  Hebrews  with  Eiistern 
powers  ;  not  merely  elucidating  perplexed  points  in  the  historical 
books,  such  as  the  chronology  of  the  Books  of  Kings  and  the 
political  relations  of  the  Northern  Kingdom  under  the  djTiasty 
of  Jehu,  but  throwing  most  important  light  on  the  historical 


390  REGULA  FIDEL  lect.  ii. 

basis  of  the  new  prophecy  of  the  eighth  century  B.C.  The 
recently  published  Inscriptions  of  Cyrus  {Journal  of  Royal 
Asiatic  Soc,  1880,  pp.  70-97  ;  Trans.  Soc.  Bib.  Arch.,  vol.  vii. 
pp.  139-176)  seem  to  be  not  less  instructive.  Compare  Pro- 
fessor Sayce  in  the  Academy,  Oct.  16,  1880  ;  M.  Halevy  in  the 
Revue  des  Etudes  Juives,  No.  1,  pp.  9-31  ;  and  Mr.  Chejme's 
Isaiah,  vol.  ii.  pp.  264-270  (London,  1881). 

Not  second  in  importance  to  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  is 
the  stone  of  King  Mesha  of  Moab,  now  in  the  Louvre.  The 
Egyptian  monuments  have  helped  us  little.  When  the  external 
aids  for  the  study  of  the  period  of  revelation  are  so  scanty,  and 
of  such  recent  discovery,  we  must  recognise  a  supreme  wisdom 
in  the  Providence  which  prevented  the  formation  of  the  Old 
Testament  Canon  from  being  limited  by  those  narrow  dogmatic 
principles  by  which  the  Bible  is  still  often  measured. 

Lecture  IL 

Note  1 ,  p.  34. — See,  especially,  the  Arabic  catena  on  Genesis 
published  by  Professor  Lagarde  in  his  Materialien  zur  Kritik 
mid  Geschichte  des  Pentateuchs  (Leipzig,  1867)  from  a  Carshunic 
MS.  of  the  sixteenth  century.  This  compilation  of  a  Syriac  scribe 
is  full  of  Jewish  traditions,  and  even  in  form,  as  the  editor 
observes,  is  quite  of  the  character  of  a  Jewish  Midrash. 

Note  2,  p.  35. — On  the  Regula  Fidei,  and  its  connection 
with  the  ambiguity  of  the  allegorical  interpretation,  so  keenly 
felt  in  controversy  with  heretics,  compare  Diestel,  Geschichte  des 
alten  Testaments  in  der  Christlichen  Kirche,  p.  38  (Irenseus, 
Tertullian),  p.  85  (Augustine).  The  principle  is  clearly  laid 
down  by  Origen  :  "  Many  think  that  they  have  the  mind  of 
Christ,  and  not  a  few  differ  from  the  opinions  of  the  earlier 
Christians  ;  but  the  preaching  of  the  Church,  handed  down  in 
regular  succession  from  the  Apostles,  still  abides,  and  is  present 
in  the  Church.  Therefore,  the  only  truth  to  be  believed  is  that 
which  in  no  point  departs  from  ecclesiastical  and  apostolical 
tradition."     (Princip.,  Praef.,  §  2.) 

Note  3,  p.  40. — Prologus  Galeatus. — "  This  prologue  may  fit 
all  the  books  which  we  have  translated  from  the  Hebrew. 
Books  outside  of  these  are  apocryphal.  Therefore  the  so-called 
Wisdom  of  Solomon,  the  book  of  Jesus  son  of  Sirach,  Judith, 


LECT.  II.  APOCRYPHA.  391 

Tol)it,  and  The  Shepherd  are  not  canonical.  The  first  book  of 
Maccabees  I  found  in  Hebrew,  the  second  is  Greek,  as  may  be 
proved  from  its  very  idiom." 

Praef,  in  Jeremiam, — "We  have  passed  by  the  book  of 
Baruch,  Jeremiah's  amanuensis,  which  the  Hebrews  neither  read 
nor  possess." 

Praef.  in  Esdram  et  Nehemiam. — "  Let  no  one  be  offended 
that  we  have  given  but  one  book,  nor  let  him  delight  in  the 
dreams  of  the  apocryphal  third  and  fourth  books  [that  is.  First 
and  Second  Esdras  of  the  English  Apocrypha]  ;  for  among  the 
Hebrews  the  words  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  are  united  in  a  single 
volume,  and  what  is  not  found  with  them  is  to  be  rejected." 

Praef.  in  Lihrum  Esther. — "The  Book  of  Esther  has  un- 
questionably been  vitiated  by  various  translators.  I  have 
translated  it  word  for  word  as  it  stands  in  the  Hebrew 
archives." 

Pra^f  in  Danielem. — "  The  story  of  Susanna,  the  Song  of  the 
Three  Children,  and  the  fables  of  Bel  and  the  Dragon  are  not 
found  in  the  Hebrew  Daniel  ;  but  as  they  are  current  through- 
out the  world  we  have  added  them  at  tlie  end,  marking  them 
with  an  obelus,  lest  the  ignorant  should  fancy  us  to  have  excised 
a  great  part  of  the  volume."  Jerome  adds  an  interesting 
account  of  arguments  against  the  additions  to  Daniel,  which  he 
had  heard  from  a  Jewish  doctor,  leaving  the  decision  to  his 
readers. 

Note  4,  p.  40. — The  quotation  is  from  the  Prologvs  Galeatus. 
Compare  the  preface  to  Chronicles  addressed  to  Domnio  and 
Rogatianus :  "  Let  him  who  would  challenge  aught  in  this  ver- 
sion ask  the  Jews,  consult  his  own  consciousness,  examine  the 
text  and  context  of  the  passage  ;  then  let  him  find  fault  with  my 
work  if  he  can.  So  wherever  you  find  an  asterisk  in  this 
volume,  you  are  to  recognise  an  addition  from  the  Hebrew  not 
found  in  Latin  copies.  Conversely,  an  obelus  or  transverse  line 
prefixed  to  a  passage  denotes  an  addition  made  by  the  Septua- 
gint  interpreters,  either  for  the  improvement  of  the  style,  or  by 
the  authority  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  though  it  is  not  read  in  the 
Hebrew." 

Note  5,  p.  41. — Tlie  version  of  Aquila,  a  Jewish  proselyte 
and  disciple  of  the  famous  Eabbi  Akiba,  was  made  expressly  in 
the  interests  of  Jewish  exegesis,  and  reproduced  with  scrupulous 
accuracy  the  received  text  of  the  second  Christian  centufy.    Sym- 


392  ORIGEN'S  HEXAPLA,  lect.  ii. 

machus  and  Theodotion  followed  later,  but  still  in  the  second 
century.  The  former,  according  to  Eusebius  and  Jerome,  was 
an  Ebionite,  one  of  the  sect  of  Jewish  Christians  who  still  held 
to  the  observance  of  the  law,  like  the  opponents  of  Paul.  It  is 
uncertain  whether  Theodotion  was  an  Ebionite  (Jerome),  or  a 
proselyte  (Irenteus).  Aquila,  says  Jerome,  sought  to  reproduce 
the  Hebrew  word  for  word  ;  Symmachus  aimed  at  a  clear  expres- 
sion of  the  sense  ;  while  Theodotion  rather  sought  to  give  a 
revised  edition  not  very  divergent  from  the  Greek  of  the  Septua- , 
gint.  These  versions  were  arranged  in  parallel  columns  in  the 
Hexapla  of  Origen,  composed  in  the  first  half  of  the  third  century. 
The  fragments  of  them  which  remain  in  Greek  MSS.  of  the 
Septuagint,  in  the  Patristic  literature,  or  in  the  Syriac  transla- 
tion of  the  fifth  column  of  the  Hexapla  made  by  Paul  of  Tela, 
in  Alexandria,  a.d.  618,  are  collected  in  Dr.  Field's  edition, 
Orujenis  Hexaplonim  quae  supersunt  (Oxford,  1867-1875).  All 
that  is  known  about  these  versions  is  put  together  in  the  prole- 
gomena to  Dr.  Field's  work. 

Note  6,  p.  41. — Praef.  in  Lihrum  Job. — "To  understand 
this  book  I  procured,  at  no  small  cost,  a  doctor  from  Lydda,  who 
was  deemed  to  hold  the  first  place  among  the  Hebrews." 

Praef.  in  Chron.  ad  D.  et  R. — "  When  your  letters  reached 
me,  asking  a  Latin  version  of  Chronicles,  I  got  a  doctor  of 
Tiberias,  in  high  esteem  among  the  Hebrews,  and  with  him  col- 
lated everything,  as  the  proverb  goes,  from  the  crown  of  the 
head  to  the  tip  of  the  nails.  Thus  confirmed,  I  have  ventured 
to  comply  with  your  request."  Bar  Anina  is  named  in  Epist. 
84.  Jerome  never  gained  such  a  knowledge  of  Hebrew  as  gave 
him  confidence  to  dispense  with  the  aid  of  the  Jews. 

Note  7,  p.  41. — The  passage  quoted  in  Art.  VI.  is  from 
Praef.  in  libros  Salomonis. — "  As  the  Church  reads  Judith,  Tobit, 
and  the  books  of  Maccabees,  but  does  not  receive  them  among 
tlie  canonical  Scriptures,  so  let  her  read  these  two  books 
[Ecclesiasticus  and  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon]  for  the  edification 
of  the  laity,  but  not  to  confirm  the  authority  of  ecclesiastical 
doclrines." 

Note  8,  p.  42. — "On  their  proniiscuous  acceptance  of  all 
books  into  the  Canon,  I  will  say  no  more  than  that  herein 
they  depart  from  the  consensus  of  the  early  Church.  For  it  is 
known  what  Jerome  reports  as  the  common  judgment  of  the 
ancients.    .    .    .    I  am  not  unaware,  however,  that  the  decree 


LECT.  II.  VOWEL  POINTS.  393 


of  Trent  agrees  with  the  third  (Ecumenical  Council,  which 
Augustine  follows  in  his  book  De  Dodr.  Cliristiana.  But  as 
Augustine  testifies  that  all  were  not  agreed  upon  the  matter  in 
his  time,  let  this  point  be  left  open.  But  if  arguments  are  to  be 
drawn  from  the  books  themselves,  there  are  many  proofs,  besides 
their  idiom,  that  they  ought  to  take  a  lower  place  than  the 
fathers  of  Trent  award  to  them,  etc."  Compare  the  statement, 
Institute  iv.  9,  §  14. 

Note  9,  p.  48. — See  the  evidence  of  this  from  the  Rabbini- 
cal literature  in  Zunz's  Gottesdiemtliche  Vodrdge  der  Jiiden,  p.  7 
(Berlin,  1832).  Our  Lord  upon  the  cross  quoted  Ps.  xxii.  in  a 
Targum. 

Note  10,  p.  48. — Mishna,  Megilla,  iv.  4. — "He  who  reads 
in  the  Pentateuch  must  not  read  to  the  Meturgeman  more  than 
one  verse,  and  in  the  prophets  three  verses.  If  each  verse  is  a 
paragraph,  they  are  read  one  by  one.  The  reader  may  skip  in 
the  prophets,  but  not  in  the  law.  How  long  may  he  spend  in 
searching  for  another  passage  ?  So  long  as  the  Meturgeman 
goes  on  speaking."  The  practice  of  oral  translation  into  Ara- 
maic led  ultimately  to  the  formation  of  written  Targums  or 
Aramaic  paraphrases  ;  but  these  were  long  discouraged  by  the 
Scribes. 

Note  11,  p.  49. — The  structure  of  the  Semitic  languages 
makes  it  much  easier  to  dispense  with  the  vowels  than  an 
English  reader  might  suppose.  The  chief  difficulty  lay  with 
vowels,  or  still  more  with  diphthongs,  at  the  end  of  a  word,  and 
was  met  at  a  very  early  date  by  the  use  of  weak  consonants  to 
indicate  cognate  vowel-sounds  {e.g.  W  =  au,  u  ;  Y  =  ai,  i).  This 
use  of  the- vowel -con.sonants  is  found  even  on  the  stone  of 
Mesha,  and  has  been  adopted  in  various  measure,  not  only  in 
Hebrew,  but  in  Syriac  and  Arabic.  But  in  all  these  languages 
the  plan  of  marking  every  vowel-sound  by  points  alx)ve  or 
below  the  line  came  in  comparatively  late,  was  developed  slowly, 
and  never  extended  to  all  books.  In  Arabic,  the  vowel-points 
are  hardly  ever  used  except  for  the  Koran,  or  in  difficult  poetry, 
and  in  philological  books.  The  testimonies  of  the  Talmudists 
and  of  Jerome  are  quite  express  to  show  that  at  their  time  the 
true  vocalisation  of  ambiguous  words  was  known  only  by  oral 
teaching.  Jerome,  for  example,  says  that  in  Hab.  iii.  5  the 
Hebrew  has  only  D,  B,  and  R,  without  any  vowel,  which  may 
be  read  either  as  dxi^jar,  "  word/'  or  deber^  "  plague."    A  supposed 


394  PHARISEES  lect.  hi. 

interest,  of  orthodoxy  long  led  good  scholars  like  the  Biixtorfs 
to  fight  for  the  antiquity  and  authority  of  the  points.  There 
is  now  no  question  on  the  subject ;  for  MSS.  brought  from 
Southern  Russia  and  Arabia,  containing  a  different  notation  for 
the  vowels,  prove  that  our  present  system  is  not  only  compara- 
tively recent,  but  is  the  outcome  of  a  gradual  process,  in  which 
several  methods  were  tried  in  different  parts  of  the  Jewish 
world.  The  rolls  read  in  the  synagogue  are  still  unpointed,  a 
relic  of  the  old  condition  of  all  MSS. 

Lecture  III. 

Note  1,  p.  55. — On  the  history  of  the  period  covered  by  this 
Lecture  the  English  reader  may  consult  with  advantage  Ewald's 
History  of  Israel,  Bd.  iv.  (Eng.  Trans.,  vol.  v.  London,  1874), 
and  the  later  chapters  of  Kuenen's  Religion  of  Israel  (Eng.  Trans., 
vol.  iii.  London,  1875).  In  French  the  most  important  recent 
work,  and  the  best  contribution  of  Jewish  scholarship  to  the 
history  of  the  period  of  the  Second  Temple,  is  Derenbourg's 
Essai  sur  Vhistoire  et  la  ge'ographie  cle  la  Palestine :  Premiere 
Partie  (Paris,  1867).  The  most  recent  state  of  research,  not 
fully  represented  in  any  English  book,  is  to  be  found  in 
Schiirer's  Lehrbuch  der  neutestamentlichen  Zeitgeschichte,  Leipzig, 
1874,  and  Wellhausen's  admirable  monograph,  Die  Pharisder 
und  die  Sadducaer,  Greifswald,  1874.  For  the  theology  of  the 
Scribes  see  Weber's  System  der  altsynagogalen  paladinischen 
Theologie,  Leipzig,  1880.  The  oldest  and  most  important  tradi- 
tions about  the  early  Scribes  are  collected  in  the  treatise  of  the 
Mishna  called  PirlcS  Aboth,  edited  in  Hebrew  and  English  in 
Mr.  C  Taylor's  Sayings  of  the  Jewish  Fathers,  Cambridge,  1877. 

Note  2,  p.  57. — From  the  genealogy  of  the  descendants  of 
Zerubbabel,  in  1  Chron.  iii.  19  seq.,  it  seems  to  follow  that  the 
Chronicler  lived  at  least  two  generations  after  Ezra.  See  the 
article  "  Chronicles "  in  the  ninth  edition  of  the  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica,  and  Bertheau's  Commentary.  But  the  Chronicles 
were  originally  one  book  with  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  and  there- 
fore cannot  have  been  written  till  the  very  close  of  the  Persian 
period.     Supra,  p.  140,  p.  170  and  note. 

Note  3,  p.  62. — Zo^e^hw?,,  Antiquities,  xiii.  10,  §  6:  "The 
Sadducees  had  only  the  well-to-do  classes  on  their  side.  The 
populace  would   not  follow  them;  but  the  Pharisees  had  the 


LECT.  III.  AND  SADDUCEES.  395 

multitude  as  their  auxiliaries."  Ihxd.  xviii.  1,  §  4 :  "The  Sadclucees 
are  the  men  of  highest  rank,  but  they  effect  as  good  as  nothing, 
for  in  affairs  of  government  they  are  compelled  against  their 
will  to  follow  the  dicta  of  the  Pharisees,  as  the  masses  would 
otherwise  refuse  to  tolerate  them." 

The  best  account  of  the  relative  position  of  the  Scribes  and 
the  governing  class  at  different  periods  is  given  in  Wellhausen's 
monograph  on  the  Pharisees  and  Sadducees  cited  above.  In 
addition  to  the  works  named  in  the  first  note  to  this  Lecture, 
Geiger's  Urschrift  und  Uebersetzungen  (Breslau,  1857)  deserves 
special  notice  ;  but  this  book  must  be  read  with  great  caution, 
and  has  been  too  closely  followed  by  several  recent  writers. 
On  the  position  of  the  two  parties  in  the  Sanhedrin,  Kuenen's 
essay  Over  de  samenstelling  van  het  Sanhedrin^  in  the  Proceedings 
of  the  Eoyal  Society  of  Amsterdam,  1866,  is  conclusive.  On 
this  topic,  and  on  the  whole  meaning  of  the  antithesis  of  the 
Pharisees  and  Sadducees,  older  scholars  went  astray  by  follow- 
ing too  closely  the  unhistorical  views  of  later  Jewish  tradition. 
When  Judaism  had  ceased  to  have  a  national  existence,  and  was 
merely  a  religious  sect,  the  Schoolmen  naturally  became  its 
heads  ;  and  the  tradition  assumed  that  it  had  always  been  so, 
and  that  the  whole  history  of  the  nation  was  made  up  of  such 
theological  and  legal  controversies  as  engrossed  the  attention  of 
later  times.  (See  Taylor's  Sayings  of  the  Fathers,  Excursus  III.). 
This  view  bears  its  condemnation  on  its  face.  Before  the  fall 
of  the  state  the  party  of  the  Scribes  was  opposed,  not  to  another 
theological  sect,  but  to  the  aristocracy,  which  had  its  centre  in  the 
high  priesthood,  and  pursued  practical  objects  of  political  and 
social  aggrandisement  on  very  different  lines  from  those  of 
scholastic  controversy.  That  the  Sadducees  are  the  party  headed 
by  the  chief  priests,  and  the  Pharisees  the  party  of  the  Scribes, 
is  plain  from  the  New  Testament,  especially  from  Acts  v.  17. 
The  higher  priesthood  was  in  spirit  a  very  secular  nobility, 
more  interested  in  war  and  diplomacy  than  in  the  service  of  the 
Temple.  The  theological  tenets  of  the  Sadducees,  as  they  appear 
in  the  New  Testament  and  Josephus,  had  a  purely  political 
basis.  They  detested  the  doctrine  of  the  Resurrection  and  the 
fatalism  of  the  Pharisees,  because  these  opinions  were  employed 
by  their  adversaries  to  thwart  their  political  aims.  The  aristo- 
cracy suffered  a  great  loss  of  position  by  the  subjection  to  a 
foreign  power  of  the  nation  which  they  had  ruled  in  the  early 


396  MISHNA,  lect.  hi. 

Hasmonean  period  when  the  high  priest  was  a  great  prince. 
But  the  Pharisees  discouraged  all  rebellion.  Israel's  business 
was  only  to  seek  after  the  righteousness  of  the  law.  The  re- 
demption of  the  nation  would  follow  in  due  time,  without  man's 
interference.  The  resurrection  would  compensate  those  who 
had  suffered  in  this  life,  and  the  hope  of  this  reward  made  it 
superfluous  for  them  to  seek  a  present  deliverance. 

Note  4,  p.  63. — The  word  Mishna  means  instruction,  literally 
repetition,  inculcation.  From  the  same  root  in  Aramaic  form 
the  doctors  of  the  Mishna  bear  the  name  of  Tanna,  teacher 
(repeater).  After  the  close  of  the  Mishna  the  collection  and 
interpretation  of  tradition  was  carried  on  by  a  new  succession  cf 
scholars  whose  contributions  make  up  the  Gemara  (decision, 
doctrine),  a  vast  and  desultory  commentary  on  the  Mishna.  There 
are  two  Gemaras,  one  Palestinian,  the  other  Babylonian.  The 
name  for  a  doctor  of  the  Gemara  is  Amora,  speaker.  Mishna 
and  Gemara  together  make  up  the  Talmud.  The  Babylonian 
Gemara  was  not  completed  till  the  sixth  century  of  our  era. 

The  whole  Mishna  was  published,  with  a  Latin  translation 
and  notes,  by  G.  Surenhusius,  in  6  vols,  folio  (Amsterdam,  1698- 
1703).  There  is  a  German  translation  by  Rabe  (1760-1763), 
and  another  printed  in  Hebrew  letters  by  Jost  (Berlin,  1832- 
1834).  Tliere  is  no  complete  English  version,  but  eighteen 
treatises,  still  important  for  the  daily  life  of  the  Jews,  were 
translated  by  Raphall  and  De  Sola  (London,  1845).  Another 
selection  is  given  by  Dr.  Barclay,  now  Bishop  of  Jerusalem,  in 
his  work,  T]ie  Talmud  (London,  1878). 

Note  5,  p.  65. — Mishna, Mactser  Sheni,  v.  15  (ed.  Surenh.,  vol.  i. 
p.  287).  On  the  change  in  the  law  of  redemption,  introduced  by 
Hillel,  which  is  another  example  in  point,  see  Derenbourg,  lib.  city 
p.  188.  Compate  also  Zunz,  Gottesdienstliche  Vortrage  der  Juden, 
pp.  11,  45  (Berlin,  1832). 

Note  6,  p.  67. — The  point  in  which  the  grammatical  exegesis 
of  the  Mediaeval  Jews  was  most  defective  was  that  they  always 
assumed  it  to  be  possible  to  translate  what  lay  before  them,  and 
would  not  recognise  that  many  difficulties  arise  from  corrup- 
tion of  the  text.  In  a  book  of  profane  antiquity,  a  passage  that 
cannot  be  construed  grammatically  is  at  once  assumed  to  be  cor- 
rupt, and  a  remedy  is  sought  from  MSS.  or  conjecture.  The 
Jews,  and  until  recently  the  great  majority  of  Christian  scholars, 
refused  to  adnjit  this  principle  for  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.     The 


LECT.  III.  ARCHETYPE.  397 

Septuagint  proves  the  existence  of  corruptions  in  the  Hebrew 
text,  and  often  supplies  the  correction.  Yet  in  such  cases  tlie 
translators  of  1611,  and  many  of  their  successors,  prefer  to  cling 
to  the  Hebrew  text,  and  force  a  sense  out  of  it  in  defiance  of  the 
laws  of  grammar.  This  method  has  filled  Hebrew  grammars 
with  false  rules,  or  exceptions  to  rules,  and  has  caused  the 
Hebrew  prophets  and  poets  to  be  charged  with  many  confused 
and  enigmatic  utterances,  nay,  with  much  absolute  nonsense, 
which  is  really  due  to  corruptions  of  text 

Till  commentators  on  the  Old  Testament  frankly  accept  the 
principles  undisputed  among  other  interpreters,  and  are  content 
to  confess  that  there  are  passages  and  phrases  in  the  Hebrew 
Bible  which  cannot  be  understood  without  emendation  from 
the  versions,  or  from  conjecture  where  the  corruption  is  older 
than  the  LXX.,  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  evil  influence  of  Tal- 
mudic  exegesis  has  been  thoroughly  overcome.  An  English- 
Bible  marking  the  places  where  no  good  sense  can  be  got  out  of 
the  text  is  much  wanted.  Messrs,  Cheyne  and  Driver's  notes  in 
the  Variorum  and  Centenary  Bibles,  published  by  Messrs.  Eyre  and 
Spottiswoode,  supply  the  want  in  part  ;  but  their  plan  does  not 
embrace  all  that  is  required.  Compare  on  this  subject  the  re- 
marks of  J.  Olshausen  in  the  preface  to  his  German  Commentary 
on  the  Psalms  (Leipzig,  1853),  a  book  far  too  little  known  in 
our  country.  Examples  of  the  few  cases  where  the  Authorised 
Version  has  been  misled  by  dogmatical  or  historical  preposses- 
sions will  be  found  supra,  pp.  258,  265.  See  also  Ezra  ix.  4, 
5,  "  sacrifice  "  for  "  meat-offering,"  infra,  p.  421. 

Note  7,  p.  70. — In  last  century  great  hopes  were  entertained 
of  the  results  to  be  derived  from  a  collation  of  Hebrew  MSS. 
The  collections  of  Kennicott  (1776-1780)  and  De  Rossi  (1784- 
1788)  showed  that  all  MSS.  substantially  represent  one  text,  and, 
so  far  as  the  consonants  are  concerned,  recent  discoveries  have 
not  led  to  any  new  result.  On  the  text  that  lay  before  the 
Talmudic  doctors  compare  Strack,  Prolegomena  Critica  in  Vetus 
Testamentum  Hebraicum  (Lei-pzig,  1873).  On  Aquila  see  Lecture 
II.,  note  5.  On  the  Targums  consult  Deutsch's  article  in  Smith's 
Dictionary  oj  the  Bible,  Schiirer,  oj).  cit.,  p.  475  seq.,  and  infra, 
note  12. 

Note  8,  p.  71. — Tlie  proof  that  all  copies  of  the  Hebrew 
text  go  back  to  one  archetype,  and  the  explanation  of  the  so- 
called  "  extraordinarv  points,"  were  given  independently  bv 
IS 


398  SAMARJTANS.  lect.  iii. 

Olsliausen  in  liis  commentary  on  tlie  Psalms  (1853),  and  La- 
garde  in  liis  Anmerhungen  zur  Griechiaclieii  Uebersetzung  der  Pro- 
verhien  (1863).  The  result  has  been  accepted  by  Noldeke 
(whose  remarks  in  Hilgeiifeld's  Zeitschrift,  1873,  pp.  444  seq., 
are  worthy  of  notice),  and  by  other  scholars.  I  know  of  no 
attempt  to  refute  the  argument. 

Note  9,  p.  73. — Up  to  the  time  of  Nehemiah's  second  visit 
to  Jerusalem,  there  was  still  a  party,  even  among  the  priests, 
which  entertained  friendly  relations  with  the  Samaritans, 
cemented  by  marriages.  Nehemiah  broke  up  this  party  ;  and 
an  unnamed  priest,  who  was  Sanballat's  son-in-law,  was  driven 
into  exile.  This  priest,  who  would  naturally  flee  to  his  father- 
in-law,  is  plainly  identical  with  the  priest  Manasseh,  son-in-law 
of  Sanballat,  of  whom  Josephus  {Antiq.  xi.  8)  relates  that  he 
fled  from  Jerusalem  to  Samaria,  and  founded  the  schismatic 
temple  on  Mount  Gerizim,  with  a  rival  hierarchy  and  ritual. 
The  account  of  Josephus  is  confused  in  chronology  and  untrust- 
worthy in  detail  ;  but  the  main  fact  agrees  with  the  Biblical 
narrative,  and  it  is  clear  that  the  establishment  of  the  rival 
temple  was  a  natural  consequence  of  the  final  defeat  of  the 
Samaritans  in  their  persistent  efforts  to  establish  relations  with 
the  Jewish  priesthood  and  secure  admission  to  the  temple  at 
Jerusalem.  This  determines  the  age  of  the  Samaritan  Penta- 
teuch. The  Samaritans  cannot  have  got  the  law  before  the 
Exile  through  the  priest  of  the  high  place  at  Samaria  mentioned 
in  2  Kings  xvii.  28.  For  the  worship  of  Jehovah,  as  practised 
at  Samaria  before  the  fall  of  the  Northern  Kingdom,  was  remote 
from  the  ordinances  of  the  law,  and  up  to  the  time  w^hen  the 
books  of  Kings  were  written  the  Samaritans  worshipped  images, 
and  did  not  observe  the  laws  of  the  Pentateuch  (2  Kings  xvii. 
34,  41).  The  Pentateuch,  therefore,  was  introduced  as  their 
religious  code  at  a  later  date  ;  and  it  could  not  be  accepted  ex- 
cept in  connection  with  the  ritual  and  priesthood  which  they 
received  from  Jerusalem  through  the  fugitive  priest  banished  by 
Nehemiah. 

Note  10,  p.  74. — On  the  Book  of  Jubilees,  see  especially  H. 
Eonsch,  Das  Buch  der  Jubildeii  (Leipzig,  1874),  and  Schiirer, 
op.  cit.,  p.  459  seq.  On  the  various  readings  of  the  book, 
Ronsch,  PI).  196,  514. 

Note  1 1 ,  p.  7  5. — On  Hillel  and  his  school,  see  especially  Deren- 
bourg,  op.  cit.  chap,  xi ;  and  on  the  development  of  his  system  by 


LECT.  III.  AKIBA.  399 

R  Ishmael  and  R.  Akiba,  ihid.^  chap,  xxiii.  "  Akiba  adopted, 
not  only  the  seven  rules  of  Hillel,  but  the  thirteen  of  Ishmael  ; 
even  the  latter  did  not  suffice  him  in  placing  all  the  halachoth  or 
decisions  of  the  Eabbins  under  the  shield  of  the  word  of  the 
Pentateuch.  His  system  of  interpretation  does  not  recognise  the 
limits  established  by  the  usage  of  the  language,  and  respected 
by  Ishmael ;  every  word  which  is  not  absolutely  indispensable 
to  express  the  intention  of  the  legislator,  or  the  logical  relations 
of  the  sentences  of  a  law  and  their  parts,  is  designed  to  enlarge 
or  restrict  the  sphere  of  the  law,  to  introduce  into  it  the  addi- 
tions of  tradition,  or  exclude  what  tradition  excludes.  No  par- 
ticle or  conjunction,  be  it  augmentative  or  restrictive,  escapes 
this  singular  method  of  exegesis."  Thus  the  Hebrew  prefix  eth^ 
which  marks  the  definite  accusative,  agrees  in  form  with  the- 
preposition  with.  Hence,  when  Deut.  x.  20  says,  "  Thou  shalt 
fear  e//i- Jehovah  thy  God,"  Akiba  interprets,  "  Thou  shalt  fear 
the  doctors  of  the  law  along  with  Jehovah."  So  Aquila,  the  dis- 
ciple of  Akiba,  translates  the  mark  of  the  accusative  by  auv.  See 
Field,  Proleg.,  p.  xxii. 

Note  12,  p.  76. — The  progress  of  the  stricter  exegesis,  and 
its  influence  on  the  treatment  of  the  text,  may  also  be  traced  in 
the  history  of  the  Targums  or  Aramaic  paraphrases.  Targum 
means  originally  the  oral  interpretation  of  the  Meturgeman  in 
the  synagogue  (supra.,  p.  48).  The  Meturgemanim  did  not  keep 
close  to  their  text,  but  added  paraphrastic  expositions,  practical 
applications,  poetical  and  romantic  embellishments.  But  there 
was  a  restraint  on  individual  liberty  of  exegesis.  The  trans- 
lators formed  a  guild  of  scholars,  and  their  interpretations 
gradually  assumed  a  fixed  type.  By  and  by  the  current  form  of 
the  Targum  was  committed  to  writing  ;  but  there  was  no  fixed 
edition,  and  those  Palestinian  Targums  which  have  come  down 
to  us  belong  to  various  recensions,  and  contain  elements  added 
late  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

This  style  of  interpretation,  in  which  the  text  was  freely 
handled,  and  the  exposition  of  the  law  did  not  stand  on  the 
level  of  the  new  science  of  Akiba  and  his  associates,  fell  into  dis- 
favour with  the  dominant  schools,  just  as  the  Septuagint  did. 
The  Targum  is  severely  censured  in  the  Rabbinical  Amtings  ; 
and  at  length  the  orthodox  party  took  the  matter  into  their  own 
hands,  and  framed  a  literal  Targum,  which,  however,  did  not 
reach  its  final  shape  till  the  third  century  a.d.,  when  the  chief 


400  TARGUMS.  lect.  hi. 

seat  of  Jewish  learning  had  been  moved  to  Babylon.  The 
Babylonian  Targum  to  the  Pentateuch  is  called  the  Targum  of 
Onkelos,  i.e.  the  Targum  in  the  style  of  Aquila  (Akylas).  The 
corresponding  Targum  to  the  prophets  bears  the  name  of  Jona- 
than. As  Jonathan  is  the  Hebrew  equivalent  of  Theodotion, 
this  perhaps  means  only  the  Targum  in  the  style  of  Theodotion. 
At  any  rate,  these  Targums  are  not  the  private  enterprise  of 
individual  scholars,  but  express  the  official  exegesis  of  their  age. 
The  Targums  to  the  Hagiographa  have  not  an  official  character. 
Comp.  Geiger,  op.  cit.,-p.  163  seq.,  451  seq.  Latin  translations  of  the 
Targums  (not  quite  complete)  in  Walton's  Polyglott.  English 
translations  of  the  Targums  to  the  Pentateuch,  by  J.  W. 
Etheridge  (London,  1862-64). 

Note  13,  p.  77. — Geiger,  ojj.  a7.,  p.  232.  J/a.^secJiet  SSpherhn^ 
vi.  4.  A  copy  of  the  law  was  carried  away  by  Titus  among  the 
spoils  of  the  Temple  ;  Joseph.,  B.  J.,  Book  vii.  cap.  5,  §  5. 

Note  14,  p.  78. — The  oldest  list  of  the  TikkitnS  Sojjhertm  is 
in  the  Mechilta,  a  work  of  the  second  century,  which  gives  only 
eleven  passages.  Other  lists  in  Geiger,  p.  309  seq.;  the  full 
list  in  Ochla  w'ochla,  ed.  Frensdorff,  No.  168  (Han.,  1864). 
In  some  cases  the  so-called  old  reading  is  certainly  wrong,  e.g. 
2  Sam.  XX.  1,  "gods"  for  "tents."  Ncildeke,  in  Gmt.  Gel.Anz., 
1869,  p.  2001  seg.,  advances  the  plausible  hypothesis  that,  the 
tradition  merely  expresses,  in  no  very  accurate  form,  the  recol- 
lection that  old  copies  sometimes  varied  from  the  later  official 
text. 

Note  15,  p.  82. — A  convenient  conspectus  of  the  forms  of 
the  Semitic  alphabet  at  different  times  is  given  in  Euting's 
Table,  attached  to  the  English  translation  of  Bickell's  Hebrew 
Grammar  (1877).  See  also  the  plates  from  an  Egyptian  Ara- 
maic Papyrus  (Br.  Mus.  Papyrus  CVI*),  in  the  Oriental  Series  of 
the  Palseographic  Society,  Pt.  ii.  (1877),  pi.  xxv.  xxvi.  which  is 
probably  of  Jemsh  origin,  and  late  Ptolemaic  or  early  Roman. 
The  most  instructive  monument  for  the  old  orthography  is  the 
stone  of  Mesha  as  compared  with  later  Jewish  inscriptions. 
Compare  Wellhausen,  in  Bleek's  Einleitung,  §  296  (4th  Edn., 
1878)  ;  Lagarde,  Proverbien,  p.  4  ;  Wellhausen,  Bilcher  Samuelis, 
pp.  17  seq.  (Guttingen,  1871). 

Note  16,  p.  82. — That  the  old  Hebrew  ink  could  be  washed 
off  appears  from  Numb.  v.  23,  Exod.  xxxii.  33,  etc.  From  the 
former  passage  is  derived  the  Rabbinic  objection  to  the  use  of  a 


LECT.  IV.  SEPTUAGINT.  401 

mordant  in  ink.  See  SSpherim,  i.  5,  6,  and  the  notes  in  Miiller's 
edition  (Leipz.,  1878)  ;  Mislma  Sola,  ii.  4,  and  Wagenseil's  Com- 
mentary (Surenli.,  iii.  p.  206  seq.).  The  Jews  laid  no  value  on 
old  copies,  but  in  later  times  prized  certain  MSS.  as  specially 
correct.  A  copy  in  which  a  line  had  become  obliterated,  or 
which  was  otherwise  considerably  defective,  was  cast  aside  into 
the  Gentza  or  lumber-room  {Soplienm,  iii.  9).  There  was  a  dif- 
ference of  opinion  as  to  touching-up  faded  letters  (Ibid.  8,  and 
Miiller's  note).  Compare  Harkavy  in  MSm.  de  VAcad.  de  S.  Ptters- 
bourg,  xxiv.  p.  57,  etc. 

Lecture   IY. 

Note  1,  p.  84. — On  the  subject  of  this  lecture  compare,  in 
general,  Lagarde,  Anmerlauujen  zur  Griechischen  Uebersetzung  der 
Proverbien  (Leipz.,  1863)  ;  AVellhausen,  Der  Text  der  Biicher 
Samiielis  (Gott.,  1871).  To  these  two  books,  the  most  impoitant 
recent  contributions  to  a  sound  use  of  the  LXX.  for  the  criticism 
of  the  Hebrew  text,  may  be  added  the  excellent  brochure  of  J. 
Hollenberg,  Der  Character  der  Alexandrlnischtn  Uebersetzung  des 
Buches  JosKa  (Moers,  1876).  Less  satisfactory  in  method  and 
execution,  though  valuable  in  many  respects,  are  the  works  of 
Scholz,  Merx,  Sinker  (Cambridge,  1879),  and  others.  On  the 
relation  of  the  Septuagint  to  the  Palestinian  tradition  compare 
Geiger,  op.  cit.,  and  Frankel,  Ueber  den  Einfluss  der  paladinischen 
Exegese  auf  die  Alexandrinische  Hermenentik  {Le\-pzv^y  1851). 

Note  2,  p.  99. — Critical  edition  of  the  text  of  the  letter  of 
Aristeas  to  Philocrates,  by  M.  Schmidt,  in  Merx's  Archiv,  i  241 
seq.  (Halle,  1870).  It  is  unnecessary  to  sketch  its  contents,  for 
which  the  English  reader  may  turn  to  the  translations  of  Ease- 
bius  and  Josephus.  What  basis  of  truth  underlies  the  fables 
depends  mainly  on  the  genuineness  of  the  fragments  of  Aristo- 
bulu.s.  See  on  the  one  side  Wellhausen-Bleek,  §279,  on  the 
other  Kuenen's  Religion  of  Israel,  note  1  to  chap.  xi. 

Note  3,  p.  103. — Compare  Morinus,  Exerciiatio  viii.  In 
Mishna,  Megilla,  i.  8,  we  read,  "  The  Scriptures  may  be  written 
in  every  tongue.  R.  Simeon  b.  Gamaliel  says  they  did  not 
suffer  the  Scriptures  to  be  written  except  in  Greek."  On  this 
the  Gemara  observes,  "  R.  Judah  said,  that  when  our  Rabbins  per- 
mitted writing  in  Greek,  they  did  so  only  for  the  Torah,  and 
hence  arose  the  translation  made  for  King  Ptolemy,  etc."     So 


402  JEREMIAH.  lect.  iv. 

Joseplms,  tliougli  an  ortlioclox  Pharisee,  makes  use  of  the  LXX., 
even  where  it  dei^arts  from  the  Hebrew  (1  Esdras).  The  thirteen 
variations  are  given  in  the  Gemara,  ut  sujjra,  and  in  Sophemn,  i. 
9.  In  both  places  God  is  said  to  have  guided  the  seventy-two 
translators,  so  that,  writing  separately,  all  gave  one  sense.  Side 
by  side  with  this  favourable  estimate,  Soph.^  i  8,  follo^sdng  the 
glosses .  on  Mecjillath  Taanlth,  gives  the  later  hostile  tradition, 
which  it  supposes  to  refer  to  a  different  version.  "  That  day 
was  a  hard  day  for  Israel — like  the  day  when  they  made  the 
golden  calf,"  because  the  Torah  could  not  be  adequately  trans- 
lated. See  further  on  the  gradual  growth  of  the  prejudice 
against  the  Greek  translation,  Milller's  note,  op.  ciL,  p.  11.  Jerome, 
following  the  text  supplied  by  Jewish  tradition,  w411  have  it 
that  the  LXX.  translators  purposely  concealed  from  Ptolemy  the 
mysteries  of  faith,  especially  the  prophecies  referring  to  the 
advent  of  Christ.  See  Quaest.  in  Gen.,  p.  2  (ed.  Lagarde,  1868), 
and  Praef.  in  Pent. 

Note  4,  p.  1 1 0. — Delitzsch,  the  ablest  modem  advocate  of 
the  Jesaianic  authorship,  says  that  "  Isaiah  left  this  deep  and 
rich  bequest  to  the  church  of  the  Exile  and  the  church  of  the 
subsequent  future,  till  the  time  of  the  New  Jerusalem  and  the 
new  earth.  .  .  .  It  is  a  thoroughly  esoteric  book,  left  to  be 
understood  by  the  church  in  the  future." 

Note  5,  p.  112. — It  is  argued  by  those  who  ascribe  chaps, 
l.-li.  to  Jeremiah,  that  the  expression  "all  these  words"  in 
chap.  li.  60  necessarily  refers  to  the  context  immediately  pre- 
ceding. But  the  order  of  Jeremiah's  prophecies  is  greatly  dis- 
turbed (supra,  p.  120).  No  one  w^ll  argue  that  "  these  words" 
in  chap.  xlv.  1  refer  to  chap.  xliv.  ;  yet  the  argument  is  as  good 
in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  Compare  Budde,  Ueber  die 
Capitel  L.  und  LI.  des  Buches  Jeremia  in  Jahrh.  f.  D.  TheoL, 
vol.  xxiii.  pp.  428  seq.,  529  seq. 

Note  6,  p.  J 17. — There  is  one  passage  in  Jeremiah,  as  we 
read  it,  w^hich  appears  inconsistent  with  the  view  I  have  ven- 
tured to  take  of  the  prophet's  attitude  to  the  temporary  elements 
of  the  Old  Testament  ritual.  In  Jer.  xxxiii.  14-26  it  is  pre- 
dicted that  the  Levitical  priesthood  and  its  sacrifices  shall  be 
perpetual  as  the  succession  of  day  and  night.  This  passage  is 
also  wanting  in  the  Septuagint.  No  reason  can  be  suggested  for 
its  omission  ;  for  we  know  from  Philo  that  even  those  Jew^s  of 
Alexandria  who  sat  most  loosely  to  the  ceremonial  law^  regarded 


LECT.  V.  PROVERBS.  403 

the  Temple  and  its  service  as  an  essential  element  in  religion 
{Be  Migr.  Abra.,  cap.  xvi.).  If  taken  literally,  the  eternity  of 
Levitical  sacrifices,  as  expressed  in  xxxiii.  18,  seems  quite  in- 
consistent with  all  else  in  Jeremiah's  prophecies.  Taken  typi- 
cally the  verse  only  fits  the  sacrifice  of  the  mass,  to  which 
Eoman  Catholic  expositors  refer  it ;  for  the  sacrifices  are  to  be 
offered  continually  in  all  time. 

Lecture  V. 

Note  1,  p.  123. — The  earlier  part  of  the  book  of  Proverbs 
also  falls  into  several  sections  : — (1)  chap.  i.  1-6,  general  title  ; 
(2)  chap.  i.  7-ix.  18,  poetical  admonitions  in  praise  of  wisdom, 
morality,  and  religion,  not  proverbial  in  form  ;  (3)  chap.  x.  1  - 
xxii.  16,  "Proverbs  of  Solomon;"  (4)  chap.  xxii.  17-xxiv.  22, 
— a  collection  of  "Words  of  the  Wise,"  as  appears  from  the 
special  title  to  this  section,  xxii.  17-21.  Thus  the  book  con- 
tains two  collections  of  Salomonic  proverbs,  of  which  the  second 
was  copied  out  in  the  reign  of  Hezekiah,  two  anonymous  collec- 
tions of  words  of  the  wise,  and  several  minor  pieces,  the  whole 
prefaced  by  a  poetical  or  rhetorical  introduction.  That  the  two 
Salomonic  collections  were  formed  independently,  and  not  by 
the  same  hand,  appears  most  clearly  from  the  many  ca^es  in 
which  the  same  proverb  appears  in  both  (see  the  Introduction  to 
Delitzsch's  Commentary,  §  3).  Even  these  parts  of  the  book  then 
were  not  collected  by  Solomon  himself,  and  the  title  in  chap.  i.  1 
is  not  from  his  hand,  but  was  added  by  some  collector  or  editor. 
Hence  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Solomon  is  the  author 
of  chaps,  i.-ix.  any  more  than  of  the  "  Words  of  the  Y/ise."  The 
whole  book  bears  the  name  of  Solomon's  Proverbs,  because  the 
two  great  Salomonic  collections  are  the  leading  element  in  it. 
There  are  close  analogies  between  the  composition  of  the  Book 
of  Proverbs  and  that  of  the  Psalter.     See  Lecture  VII. 

Note  2,  p.  130. — The  insertion  of  the  Septuagint  in  1  Kings 
viii.  53  deserves  special  notice  for  its  intrinsic  interest.  In 
1  Kings  viii.  12,  13,  the  Hebrew  text  reads,  "Jehovah  hath 
determined  (said)  to  dwell  in  darkness.  I  have  built  a  house  of 
habitation  for  thee,  a  place  for  thee  to  dwell  in  eternally." 
These  verses  are  omitted  in  LXX.,  but  at  ver.  53  we  find  instead 
a  fuller  form  of  the  same  words  of  Solomon.  In  the  common 
editions  of  the  LXX.  the  words  run  thus  : — "  The  sun  he  made 


404  BOOK  OF  J  ASH AR,  lect.  v. 

known  in  heaven  :  the  Lord  hath  said  that  he  will  dwell  in 
darkness.  Build  my  house,  a  comely  house  for  thyself  to  dwell 
in  newness.  Behold,  is  it  not  written  in  the  book  of  song  V 
The  variations  from  the  Hebrew  text  are  partly  mistakes.  The 
word  "  comely  "  is  a  rendering  elsewhere  used  in  the  LXX.  for 
the  Hebrew  word  7iaiveh,  w^hich  in  this  connection  must  rather 
be  rendered  "  house  of  habitation,"  giving  the  same  sense  as  the 
Hebrew  of  ver.  1 3,  with  a  variation  in  the  expression.  Then  the 
phrase  "in  newness"  at  once  exhibits  itseK  to  the  Hebrew 
scholar  as  a  mistaken  reading  of  the  Hebrew  word  "  eternally." 
Again,  "  build  my  house  "  differs  in  the  Hebrew  from  "  I  have 
built "  only  by  the  omission  of  a  single  letter.  We  may  correct 
the  LXX.  accordingly,  getting  exactly  the  sense  of  the  Massoretic 
text  of  ver.  1 2  ;  or  conversely,  we  may  correct  the  Hebrew  by  the 
aid  of  the  Septuagint,  in  which  case  one  other  letter  must  be 
changed,  so  that  the  verse  runs,  "  Build  my  house,  an  house  of 
habitation  for  me  ;  a  place  to  dwell  eternally."  We  now  come  to 
the  additions  of  the  LXX.  "  The  sun  he  made  known  in  heaven  " 
gives  no  good  sense.  But  many  MSS.  read,  "  The  sun  he  set  in 
heaven."  These  two  readings,  iyvcopia-ev  and  ecTTrjcrev  have  no 
resemblance  in  Greek.  But  the  corresj)onding  Hebrew  words 
are  p^H  and  p^H  respectively,  which  are  so  like  that  they  could 
easily  be  mistaken.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  latter  is 
right ;  and  the  error  in  the  common  Septuagint  text  shows  that 
the  addition  really  was  found  by  the  translators  in  Hebrew,  not 
inserted  out  of  their  own  head.  We  can  now  restore  the  whole 
original,  divide  it  into  lines  as  poetry,  and  render — 

Jehovah  created  the  sun  in  the  heavens, 
But  he  hath  determined  to  dwell  in  darkness. 
Build  my  house,  an  house  of  habitation  for  me, 
A  place  to  dwell  in  eternally. 

Or  on  the  other  reading  : — 

I  have  built  an  house  of  habitation  for  thee, 
A  place  to  dwell  in  eternally. 

The  character  of  the  expression  in  these  lines,  taken  with  the 
circumstance  of  their  transposition  to  another  place  in  the  LXX., 
would  of  itself  prove  that  this  is  a  fragment  from  an  ancient 
source,  not  part  of  the  context  of  the  narrative  of  the  chapter. 
But  the  LXX.  expressly  says  that  the  words  are  taken  from  "  The 


LECT.  V.  BAB  A  BA  THRA.  405 

Book  of  Song."  There  miglit  perhaps  be  an  ancient  book  of 
that  name,  as  we  have  in  Arabic  the  great  historical  and  poetical 
collection  of  El  Lsfahany,  called  "  The  Book  of  Songs."  But  the 
transposition  of  a  single  letter  in  the  Hebrew  converts  the  un- 
known Book  of  Song  into  the  well-known  Book  of  Jashar.  This 
correction  seems  certain.  The  slip  of  the  Septuagint  translator 
was  not  unnatural  ;  indeed,  the  same  change  is  made  by  the 
Syriac  in  Josh.  x.  13. 

Note  3,  p.  131. — The  scheme  of  the  Hebrew  Canon  may 
be  put  thus  : — • 

I.  The  five  fifths  of  the  Law 5 

II.  The  Prophets- 
Earlier  Prophets  :  Joshua,  Jutl.,  Sam.,  Kings  .         .  4 
Later  Prophets  :  Isaiah,  Jer.,  Ezek.,  The  Twelve     .         .          4 

III.  Hagiographa  or  Ketubim — 

Poetical  Books  :  Psalms,  Pio verbs,  Job  ...  3 

The  Megilloth  :  Canticles,  Ruth,  Lamen.,  Eccles.,  Esther  .^ 

Daniel,  Ezra-Nehemiah,  Chronicles  ....  3 

24 

The  fundamental  passage  in  the  Babylonian  Gemara,  Baha 
Bathra,  ff.  14,  15,  says,  "The  order  of  the  prophets  is  Joshua 
and  Judges,  Samuel  and  Kings,  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel,  Isaiah 
and  the  Twelve.  Hosea  is  the  first  because  it  is  written,  '  the 
beginning  of  the  word  of  the  Lord  by  Hosea '  (Hos.  i.  2).  .  .  . 
But,  because  his  prophecy  is  written  along  with  the  latest  pro- 
phets, Haggai,  Zechariah,  and  Malachi,  he  is  counted  with  them. 
Isaiah  is  earlier  than  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel.  .  .  .  But  because 
Kings  ends  with  destruction  and  Jeremiah  is  all  destruction, 
while  Ezekiel  beginning  with  destruction  ends  in  consolation 
and  Isaiah  is  all  consolation,  destruction  is  joined  to  destruction 
and  consolation  to  consolation.  The  order  of  the  Hagiographa  is 
Ruth  and  Psalms  and  Job  and  Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes,  Canticles, 
and  Lamentations,  Daniel  and  Esther,  Ezra  and  Chronicles." 
Compare  Miiller's  note  on  Sopherim,  iii,  5.  Isaiah  follows 
Ezekiel  in  some  ^ISS.  (Lagarde,  Symmicta,  i.  142,  Gottingen, 
1877)  and  the  order  of  the  Hagiographa  v  aries  considerably. 
On  2  Esdras  xiv.  44,  46,  see  Lect.  VI.  p.  149  and  note. 

Note  4,  p.  132. — See  the  three  enumerations  in  Jerome, 
Prol.  Galecd.  His  order  for  the  Hagiographa  is  Job,  David, 
Proverbs,    Eccles.,   Canticles,  Daniel,  Chron.,  Ezra,  Esther.     On 


406  THE  LA  W  ETERNAL.  lect.  v. 

the  Canon  of  Josepliussee  Lect.  VI.  p.  150  and  note.  Twenty- 
two  books  are  reckoned  by  Origen  in  Eusebius,  K.  E.  vi.  25,  and 
by  Epipbanius  De  Mens,  et  Pond.  c.  4  (ed.  Lagarde,  p.  156). 

Note  5,  p.  136. — Two  Greek  recensions  of  Esther  and  Tobit 
exist,  and  are  printed  in  0.  F.  Fritzsche's  Libn  Aiiocryiihi  V.  T. 
Greece  (Leipzig,  1871).  Compare  the  commentaries  of  the  same 
author  on  these  books  in  Kurzgef.  Handhich  z.  d.  Aiooc.  (Leipzig, 
1851,  1853). 

Note  6,  p.  141. — The  line  between  the  old  literature  and 
the  new  cannot  be  drawn  with  chronological  precision.  The 
characteristic  mark  of  canonical  literature  is  that  it  is  the  record 
of  the  progress  of  fresh  truths  of  revelation,  and  of  the  immedi- 
ate reflection  of  these  truths  in  the  believing  heart.  The  Psalms 
are,  in  part,  considerably  later  than  Ezra,  but  they  record  the 
inner  side  of  the  history  of  his  work  of  reformation,  and  show  us 
the  nature  of  the  faith  with  which  Israel  apprehended  the 
Law  and  its  institutes.  This  is  a  necessary  and  most  precious 
element  of  the  Old  Testament  record,  and  it  would  be  arbitrary 
to  attempt  to  fix  a  point  of  time  at  which  this  part  of  Old 
Testament  Scripture  must  necessarily  have  closed.  But  the 
direct  language  of  faith  held  by  the  psalmists  is  intrinsically 
different  from  such  artificial  reflection  on  the  law,  in  the  manner 
of  tlie  schools,  as  is  found  in  Ecclesiasticus.  The  difference  can 
be  felt  rather  than  defined,  and  a  certain  margin  of  uncertainty 
must  attach  to  every  determination  of  the  limits  of  what  is 
canoiiicaL  But,  on  the  whole,  the  instinct  that  guided  the 
formation  of  the  Hebrew  Canon  was  sound,  because  the  theories 
of  the  schools  affected  only  certain  outlying  books,  while  the 
mass  of  the  collection  established  itself  in  the  hearts  of  all  the 
faithful  in  successive  generations,  under  historical  circumstances 
of  a  sifting  kind.  The  religious  struggle  under  the  Maccabees, 
which  threw  the  people  of  God  upon  the  Scriptures  for  comfort 
when  the  outward  order  of  the  theocracy  was  broken,  doubtless 
was  for  the  later  books  of  the  Canon  a  period  of  proof  such  as 
the  Captivity  was  for  the  older  literature.  Compare  Lecture  VI. 
Note  7,  p.  145. — Midrash  Rahha,  p.  529  (Leipz.,  1864). 
For  the  law  as  everlasting,  see  Baruch,  iv.  1.  The  pre-existence 
of  the  law  (Ecclus.  xxiv.  9)  follows  from  its  being  identified  with 
wisdom  as  described  in  Prov.  viii.  Compare  further  Weber  ojj.  cit. 
p.  18  seg. 

Note  8,  p.  146. — On  the  term  Kahhala  see  Zunz,  op.  cit.  p.  44, 


LECT.  VI.  FOURTH  ESDRAS,  407 

where  the  evidence  from  Jewish  authorities  is  carefully  collected. 
Compare  Weber,  <yp.  cit  p.  79  seq.  Mishna,  Megilla^  iii.  1. — "  If 
the  men  of  a  town  sell  a  Torah  they  may  not  buy  with  its 
price  the  other  books  of  Scripture  ;  if  they  sell  Scriptures  they 
may  not  buy  a  cloth  to  wrap  round  the  Torah  ;  if  they  sell  such 
a  cloth  they  may  not  buy  an  ark  for  synagogue  rolls  ;  if  they 
sell  an  ark  they  may  not  buy  a  synagogue  ;  nor  if  they  sell  a 
synagogue  may  they  buy  a  street  (an  open  ground  for  devotion, 
Matt  vi.  5)." 

Lecture  VI. 

Note  1,  p.  149. — The  Latin  text  of  Fourth  Esdras  xiv.  44, 
46  does  not  state  the  number  of  canonical  books,  which,  how- 
ever, ought  to  be  got  by  subtracting  the  70  esoteric  books  of 
ver.  46  from  the  whole  number  in  ver.  44.  The  latter  number, 
however,  is  hopelessly  corrupt.  It  has  been  proved  by  Professor 
Gildemeister  and  Mr.  Bensly  {Hie  Missing  Fragmunt  of  4  Ezra, 
Camb.,  1875)  that,  with  the  exception  of  the  Amiens  MS.  (A), 
unearthed  by  the  latter  scholar,  all  copies  hitherto  known  are 
derived  from  the  Cod.  Sangermanensis  (S)  and  have  no  critical 
value.     Through  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Bensly  I  am  able  to  give 

ngenti  septuaginta  quatuor 

the  folloTvdng  readings.  A  has  DCCCCLXXIIIL  ;  S.  C.  1. 
3.  5.  8.  9.  11.  12.  C.  15  (  =  Add.  1848  Univ.  Libr.  Camb.)  D.  T. 
read  DCCCCIIII.  Other  readings  are  XCIIII.  (C.  4),  octingenti 
Illlor  (C.  10),  ducenti  quatuor  (C.  2).  The  Edinburgh  MS., 
the  only  one  which  I  have  been  able  to  consult  personally, 
agrees  with  S.  In  this  ambiguity  of  the  Latin  we  must  rely  on 
the  Eastern  versions  ;  some  of  which  give  94  in  ver.  44,  and 
also  add  in  ver.  45  the   express  statement  that  there  were  24 


books  published.     But  even 

here  there 

is 

great  vari 

ation. 

Total 

Canonical 

Esoteric 

books. 

books 

books. 

Ceriani's  Syriac  (1867) 

94 

24 

70 

Ewald's  Arabic  (1863) 

94 

24 

70 

Gildemeister' s    Arabic 

(1877) 

Gives 

no 

nnmbere. 

The  Aethiopic    . 

94  (with 

variation^ 

>) 

not  stated 

not  stated 

The  Armenian   . 

94 

not  stated 

not  stated 

Further,  though  the  fragment  of  an  Arabic  translation  from 


408  JOSEPHUS.  LECT.  vi. 

the  Syriac  given  by  Professor  Gildemeister  (p.  41)  agrees  with 
the  published  Syriac,  Jacob  of  Edessa,  in  his  thirteenth  epistle, 
published  by  Professor  W.  Wright  {Journ.  Sac.  Lit,  1867,  p. 
439),  says  that  Ezra  wrote  90  books.  One  cannot  therefore  feel 
confident  that  94  is  original  any  more  than  the  explicit  24  of 
Syr.  and  Ar.  E\v.  The  early  Syriac  church  at  least  was  too 
much  influenced  by  Jewish  tradition  not  to  know  the  Talmudic 
enumeration.  Besides,  if  94  is  original,  it  is  still  possible  that 
70  =  72  (as  in  the  case  of  the  LXX.  translators),  leaving  22 
canonical  books.  More  evidence  is  required  to  give  a  sure 
result 

On  the  supposed  enumeration  of  22  books  in  the  Jubilees, 
as  read  by  Syncellus  and  Cedrenus,  see  Eonsch,  op.  cit,  p.  527 
seq. 

Note  2,  p.  150. — Josephus,  Co7itra  Ajn'on.,  Lib.  I.  cap.  vii.  § 
5. — "  Not  every  one  was  permitted  to  write  the  national  records, 
nor  is  there  any  discrepancy  in  the  things  written  ;  but  the 
prophets  alone  learned  the  earliest  and  most  ancient  events  by 
inspiration  from  God,  and  wrote  down  the  events  of  their  own 
times  plainly  as  they  occurred. 

"  (viii.  1). — For  we  have  not  myriads  of  discordant  and  contra- 
dictory books,  but  only  two  and  twenty,  containing  the  record 
of  all  time,  and  rightly  believed  to  be  divine.  (2)  And  of  these 
five  are  the  books  of  Moses,  comprising  the  laws,  and  the 
tradition  of  the  early  history  of  mankind  down  to  his  death.  .  .  . 
But  from  the  death  of  Moses  till  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes,  king 
of  Persia,  Avho  succeeded  Xerxes,  the  prophets  compiled  the 
history  of  their  own  times  in  thirteen  books.  The  other  four 
contain  hymns  to  God  and  precepts  of  life  for  men.  (3)  But 
from  Artaxerxes  to  our  times  all  events  have  indeed  been 
written  down  ;  but  these  later  books  are  not  deemed  worthy  of 
the  same  credit,  because  there  has  been  no  exact  succession  of 
prophets." 

The  allegorical  interpretation  of  Canticles,  Israel  being 
identified  with  the  spouse,  first  appears  in  2  (4)  Esdras,  v.  24, 
26  ;  vii.  26. 

Note  3,  p.  157. — On  the  legend  of  the  Great  Synagogue, 
Kuenen's  essay  Over  de  Mannen  der  Groote  Synagoge,  in  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  Royal  Society  of  Amsterdam,  1876,  is  conclusive. 
An  abstract  of  the  results  in  Wellhausen-Bleek,  §  274.  Kuenen 
follows     the     arguments     of     scholars     of     last     century,    and 


LECT.  VI.  THE  GREAT  SYNAGOGUE.  409 

especially  Rail's  Diatribe  de  Synagoga  Magna  (Utrecht,  1725); 
but  lie  completes  their  refutation  of  the  Rabbinical  fables  by 
utilising  and  placing  in  its  true  light  the  important  observa- 
tions of  Krochmal,  as  to  the  connection  between  the  Great 
Synagogue  and  the  Convocation  of  Neh.  viii.-x.,  which,  in  the 
hands  of  Jewish  scholars,  had  only  led  to  fresh  confusion.  See, 
for  example,  Graetz  {Kohelet,  Anh.  i.  Leipz.,  1871)  for  a  model  of 
confused  reasoning  on  the  Great  Synagogue  and  the  Canon, 
Krochmal's  discovery  that  the  Great  Synagogue  and  the  Great 
Convocation  are  identical  rests  on  the  clearest  evidence.  See 
especially  the  Midrash  to  Ruth.  "  What  did  the  men  of  the 
Great  SjTiagogue  do  ?  They  \^Tote  a  book  and  spread  it  out  in 
the  court  of  the  temple.  And  at  dawn  of  day  they  rose  and 
found  it  sealed.  This  is  what  is  written  in  Neh.  ix.  38 " 
(Leipzig  ed,  of  1865,  p.  77).  According  to  the  tradition  of  the 
Talmud,  Baba  Batlira,  ut  mpra,  the  men  of  the  Great  Sjmagogue 
-WTote  Ezekiel,  the  Minor  Prophets,  Daniel,  and  Esther  ;  and  Ezra 
A\Tote  his  o^\Ti  book  and  continued  the  genealogies  of  Chronicles. 
This  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  Canon  ;  it  merely  expresses  an 
opinion  as  to  the  date  of  these  books.  Further,  the  Aboth  of 
Rabbi  Nathan  (a  post-Talmudic  book)  says  that  the  Great  Syna- 
gogue arose  and  explained  Proverbs,  Canticles,  and  Ecclesiastes, 
which  had  previously  been  thought  apocrj-phal.  Such  is  the 
traditional  basis  for  the  famous  conjecture  of  Elias  Levita  in  his 
Massoreth  hammassoreth  (Venice,  1538),  which  took  such  a  hold 
of  public  opinion  that  Hottinger,  in  the  middle  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  could  say  :  "  Hitherto  it  has  been  an  unquestioned 
axiom  among  Jews  and  Christians  alike,  that  the  Canon  of  the 
Old  Testament  was  fixed,  once  and  for  all,  with  Divine  autho- 
rity, by  Ezra  and  the  men  of  the  Great  Synagogue"  {Thes.  Phil., 
Ziirich,  1649,  p.  112).  At  p.  110  he  says  that  this  is  only 
doubted  by  those  quibus  jjro  cerebro  fungus  est. 

Note  4,  p.  160. — In  the  Talmudic  times  it  was  matter  of 
controversy  whether  it  was  legitimate  to  write  the  Law,  the 
Prophets,  and  the  Hagiograplia  in  a  single  book.  Some  went 
so  far  as  to  say  that  each  book  of  Scripture  must  form  a  separate 
volume.  See  Sojpherim,  iii.  1,  and  Miiller's  note.  It  appears 
that  the  old  and  predominant  custom  was  in  favour  of  separa- 
tion. Boethos,  whose  copy  of  the  eight  prophets  in  one  volume 
is  referred  to  in  Baba  Bathra  and  Sopheiim,  iii.  5,  lived  about 
the  close  of  the  second  Christian  century.     Some  doctors  denied 


410  EZEKIEL,  lect.  vi. 

that  liis  copy  contained  all  the  books  "  joined  into  one."  So- 
'pkerim,  iii.  6,  allows  all  the  books  to  be  united  in  inferior  copies 
written  on  the  material  called  diphthera,  but  not  in  synagogue 
rolls  ;  a  compromise  pointing  to  the  gradual  introduction  in 
post-Talmudic  times  of  the  plan  of  treating  the  Bible  as  one 
volume. 

Note  5,  p.  160. — For  the  want  of  system  in  the  public  les- 
sons from  the  Prophets  in  early  times,  see  Luke  iv.  17,  and 
Lect.  II,,  Note  10.  According  to  Sopherim,  xiv.  18,  Esther  was 
read  at  the  feast  of  Purim,  Canticles  at  the  Passover,  Ruth  at 
Pentecost.  The  reading  of  Lamentations  is  mentioned,  ibid. 
xviii.  4.  It  is  noteworthy  that  there  is  still  no  mention  of  the 
use  of  Ecclesiastes  in  the  Synagogue.  Compare  further  Zunz, 
op.  cit,  p.  6. 

Note  6,  p.  163. — The  only  book  as  to  which  any  dispute 
seems  to  have  occurred  was  Ezekiel.  The  beginning  of  this 
book  —  the  picture  of  the  Merkaha,  or  chariot  of  Jehovah's 
glory  (1  Chron.  xxviii.  18j — has  always  been  viewed  as  a  great 
mystery  in  Jewish  theology,  and  is  the  basis  of  the  Kahhala  or 
esoteric  theosophy  of  the  Rabbins.  The  closing  chapters  were 
equally  puzzling,  because  they  give  a  system  of  law  and  ritual 
divergent  in  many  points  from  the  Pentateuch.  Compare 
Jerome's  Ep.  to  Paulinus  : — "  The  beginning  and  end  of  Ezekiel 
are  involved  in  obscurities,  and  among  the  Hebrews  these  parts, 
and  the  exordium  of  Genesis,  must  not  be  read  by  a  man  under 
thirty."  Hence,  in  the  apostolic  age,  a  question  was  raised  as  to 
the  value  of  the  book  ;  for,  of  course,  nothing  could  be  accepted 
that  contradicted  the  Torah.  We  read  in  the  Talmud  (Hagiga, 
1 3a)  that  "  but  for  Hananiah,  son  of  Hezekiah,  they  would 
have  suppressed  the  Book  of  Ezekiel,  because  its  words  contra- 
dict those  of  the  Torah.  AVhat  did  he  do  ?  They  brought  up 
to  him  three  hundred  measures  of  oil,  and  he  sat  down  and  ex- 
plained it."  Derenbourg,  op.  cit.  p.  296,  with  Graetz,  Geschichte, 
vol.  iii.  p.  561,  is  disposed  to  hold  that  the  scholar  who  recon- 
ciled Ezekiel  with  the  Pentateuch  at  such  an  expenditure  of 
midnight  oil  was  really  Eleazar  son  of  Hananiah. 

Note  7,  p.  169. — It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  Haggada  had 
no  sacred  authority.  So  Zunz,  op.  cit.  p.  42  ;  Deutsch's  Remains, 
p.  17  ;  but  compare,  on  the  other  hand,  Weber,  op.  cit.  p.  94  seq. 
Certain  Haggadoth  share  with  the  Halacha  the  name  of  Midda, 
rule  of  faith  and  life. 


ESTHER.  411 


Note  8,  p.  170. — Ahoth  of  R.  Nathan,  c.  1. — "At  first  they 
said  that  Proverbs,  Canticles,  and  Ecclesiastes  are  apocryphal. 
They  said  they  are  parabolic  writings,  and  not  of  the  Hagio- 
grapha.  So  they  prepared  to  suppress  them,  till  the  men  of  the 
Great  Synagogue  came  and  explained  them." 

Note  9,  p.  170. — The  most  palpable  argument  for  the  ori- 
ginal unity  of  Chronicles,  Ezra,  and  Nehemiah  is  that  mentioned 
in  the  text.  But  the  parts  of  Ezra-Xehemiah  which  are  not 
extracts  from  documents  in  the  hands  of  the  editor  display  all 
the  characteristic  peculiarities  of  the  Chronicles  in  style,  lan- 
guage, and  manner  of  thought.  See  De  Wette-Schrader,  Ein- 
leitung,  §§  235-237.  The  identity  of  the  author  of  Ezra  and 
Chronicles  is  admitted  by  Keil,  but  it  is  impossible  to  accept 
his  theory  that  Ezra  wrote  both  books  ;  for  the  genealogies,  and, 
indeed,  the  whole  character  of  the  work,  bring  us  down  to  a 
much  later  time.  In  Neh.  xii.  22  Darius  the  Persian  is  Darius 
Codomannus. 

Note  10,  p.  172. — Eusebius,  Hist.  Eccles.  Lih.  iv.  cap.  26.  It 
is  certainly  very  hard  to  understand  what  Jewish  authorities 
could  omit  Esther  at  so  late  a  date,  but  the  statement  of  Euse- 
bius is  precise.  In  the  fourth  century  Athanasius  and  Gregory 
of  Nazianzus  still  omit  Esther  from  the  Canon.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  the  feast  of  Purini  was  first  observed,  not  in  Pales- 
tine, but  in  the  far  East.  Lagarde  has  advanced  a  very  power- 
ful argument  to  connect  both  name  and  thing  with  the  Persian 
feast  Furdigan  {Gesammelte  Abhandlungen,  p.  161  seq.).  The 
ordinance  of  the  fast  of  Purim  (Esther  ix.  31),  which  we  see 
not  to  have  been  observed  in  Palestine  in  the  time  of  Christ,  is 
lacking  in  the  Greek  text  of  Esther. — On  the  Megillath  Taanith, 
or  list  of  days  on  which  the  Jews  are  forbidden  to  fast,  consult 
Derenbourg,  p.  439  seq. 

Note  1 1,  p.  172. — Mishna,  Sanhedrin,  xi.  1  (ed.  Suren.,  vobiv. 
p.  259).  "  All  Israelites  have  a  share  in  the  world  to  come,  ex- 
cept those  who  deny  the  resurrection  of  the  dead,  those  who 
say  that  the  Torah  is  not  from  God,  and  the  Epicureans.  R. 
Akiba  adds  those  who  read  in  outside  books,  and  him  who 
whispers  over  a  wound  the  words  of  Exod.  xv.  26," — a  kind  of 
charm,  the  sin  of  which,  according  to  the  commentators,  lay  in 
the  fact  that  these  sacred  words  were  pronounced  after  spitting 
over  the  sore.  Compare  on  the  "  outside  books  "  Geiger,  p. 
200  seq. 


412  AKIBA.  LECT.  VII. 

Note  12,  p.  173. — Mishna,  ladaim,  iii.  5. — "  All  the  Holy 
Scriptures  defile  tlie  hands  :  the  Song  of  Solomon  and  Ecclesi- 
astes  defile  the  hands.  R,  Judah  says,  The  Song  of  Solomon 
defiles  the  hands,  and  Ecclesiastes  is  disputed.  E.  Jose  says, 
Ecclesiastes  does  not  defile  the  hands,  and  the  Song  of  Solomon 
is  disputed.  R.  Simeon  says,  Ecclesiastes  belongs  to  the  light 
things  of  the  school  of  Shammai,  and  the  heavy  things  of  the 
school  of  Hillel  [i.e.,  on  this  point  the  school  of  Shammai  is  less 
strict].  R.  Simeon,  son  of  Azzai,  says,  I  received  it  as  a  tradi- 
tion from  the  seventy-two  elders  on  the  day  when  they  enthroned 
R.  Eliezer,  son  of  Azariah  [as  President  of  the  Beth  Din  at 
lamnia,  Avhich  became  the  seat  of  the  heads  of  the  Scribes  after 
the  fall  of  Jerusalem],  that  the  Song  of  Solomon  and  Ecclesiastes 
defile  the  hands.  R.  Akiba  said,  God  forbid  !  No  one  in  Israel 
has  ever  doubted  that  the  Song  of  Solomon  defiles  the  hands. 
For  no  day  in  the  history  of  the  world  is  worth  the  day  when 
the  Song  of  Solomon  was  given  to  Israel.  For  all  the  Hagio- 
grapha  are  holy,  but  the  Song  of  Solomon  is  a  holy  of  the  holies. 
If  there  has  been  any  dispute,  it  referred  only  to  Ecclesiastes. 
...   So  they  disputed,  and  so  they  decided." 

Eduiot,  V.  3. — "Ecclesiastes  does  not  defile  the  hands  according 
to  the  school  of  Shammai,  but  does  so  according  to  the  school  of 
Hillel." 

For  the  disputes  as  to  Ecclesiastes,  compare  also  Jerome  on 
chap.  xii.  13,  14.  "The  Hebrews  say  that  this  book,  which 
calls  all  God's  creatures  vain,  and  prefers  meat,  drink,  and  pass- 
ing delights  to  all  else,  might  seem  worthy  to  disappear  with 
other  lost  works  of  Solomon  ;  but  that  it  merits  canonical  autho- 
rity, because  it  sums  up  the  whole  argument  in  the  precej)t  to 
fear  God  and  do  His  commandment," 

Note  13,  p.  174. — Akiba's  anathema  in  Tosef.  SanJiedrin,  c. 
12  ;  R.  Simeon's  utterance  in  Talmud  Jer.  Megilla,  i.  5  (Kroto- 
schin  ed.  of  1866,  f.  70b). 

Lecture  VII. 

Note  1,  p.  176. — On  the  Psalter  in  general,  the  most  in- 
structive discussion  is  still  that  in  Ewald's  Dichter  des  alien 
Biindes  (vol.  i.,  2d  ed.,  Gottingen,  1866  ;  Eng.  TransL  London, 
1881).  Ewald  admits  Davidic  Psalms,  and  denies  that  there 
are  any  as   late  as   the    Maccabees.     Against  the    existence  of 


LECT.  vir.  THE  PSALTER.  413 

Davidic  Psalms  see  especially  Kuenen,  Historisch-kritisch  Onder- 
zoek,  vol.    iii.   (Leiden    1865)  ;  for  the    existence  of   Maccabee 

Psalms  see  Olshausen  in  his  Commejitar,  which  certainly  goes  | 

too  far,  and  Knenen,  •who  is  much  more  guarded  ;  against  them  j 
Ehrt,  Ahfassungszeit  und  Ahschluss  des  Faalters  (Leipzig,  1869). 
The  strongest  current  argument  against  placing  any  Psalms  so 
late   is  supposed  to  follow  from  the  history  of  the  Canon,  and 
hardly  possesses  force.     Older 's\Titers  did  not  feel  this  difficulty, 

and  were  not  insensible  to  the  internal  evidence  which  refers  < 
some  poems  to  the  Maccabee  period.     See,  for  example,  Calvin 

on  Psalms  xliv.  and  Ixxiv.     Of  commentaries  essentially  conser-  [ 

vative  on  the  subject  of  the  titles,  the  best  is  that  of  Delitzsch  ;  j 

but  it  is  not  unfair  to  say  that  his  exegesis,  based  on  accept-  \ 

ance  of  the  titles,  often  appears  precarious  to  himself,  as  in  Pss.  ! 

Iii.,  Iv.  I 

Note    2,   p.   179. — On  the   hallel   see   especially  Lagarde,  I 

Orientalia,  ii.   p.  13  seq.      Lagarde  makes  the  interesting  obser-  I 

vation  that  after  the  fall  of  the  Temple  worship,  when  the  Psalms  \ 

passed  over  to  the  use  of  the   synagogues,  they  ceased  to  be  | 

TehiUim    and   became    Mazdmtr,    MazmHre^   as   the  Arabs   and  j 

Syrians  call  them,  after  the  Heb.  Mizmor^  found  in  the  titles  of  i 

many  Psalms.  j 

Note  3,  p.  183. — Another  case  where  one  Psalm  has  been  j 

made  two  is   xlii.-xliii.,  where,  by  taking  the  words  "  0   my  ■ 
God  "  from  the  beginning  of  xlii.  6  to  the  end  of  the  previous 

verse,  and  making  a  single  change  on  the  division  of  the  words,  ' 
we  get  a  poem  of  three  stanzas,  with  an  identical  refrain   to 

each.  I 

Note  4,  p.  183. — The  five  books  of  Psalms  are  mentioned  ' 

by  Epiphanius,  De  Mens,  et  Pond.  cap.  v.  (ed.  Lagarde,  p.  157),  j 

and  by  Jerome  in  the  Prologus  Galeatus.     The  scheme  is  no  i 

doubt,  as  Epiphanius  suggests,  an  artificial  imitation  of  the  Pen-  { 

tateuch.     But  this  does  not  prove  that  the  doxologies  were  added  \ 
and  the  division  made  by  the  collector,  for  Books  IV.  and  V. 

are  originally  one  book.  \ 

Note  5,  p.  185. — Sources  of  Psalm  LXXXVL  \ 

1,  Incline,    O   Lord,  thine        1.   a.  Usual  invocation,  Is.  xxxvii.  17  ; 
ear,   answer   me  :    for   I   am    Ps.  xvii,  6,  etc.  j 

poor  and  needy.  h.   Ps.  xl.  1 7.  — "  I  am  poor  and  needy  ; "  i 

Ps.  XXV.  16  ; 


414 


PSALM  LXXXVI. 


2.  Preserve  my  soul  for  I 
am  holy  :  0  thou,  my  God, 
save  thy  servant  that  trusteth 
in  thee. 

3.  Be  gracious  to  me,  0 
Lord :  for  unto  thee  I  cry 
continually. 

4.  Make  glad  the  soul  of 
thy  servant :  for  to  thee,  0 
Lord,  do  I  lift  up  my  soul. 


5.  For  thou,  Lord,  art  good 
and  forgiving  :  and  abundant 
in  mercy  unto  all  that  call 
upon  thee. 

6.  Give  ear,  0  Lord,  unto 
my  prayer  :  and  hearken  to 
the  voice  of  my  supplica- 
tions. 

7.  In  the  day  of  my  dis- 
tress I  call  on  thee  :  for  thou 
wilt  answer  me. 

8.  There  is  none  like  thee 
among  the  gods,  0  Lord  :  and 
there  is  nought  like  thy 
works. 

9.  All  nations  whom  thou 
hast  made  shall  come  and 
worship  before  thee,  0  Lord  : 
and  shall  glorify  thy  name. 

10.  For  thou  art  great  and 
doest  wonders  :  thou,  0  God, 
alone. 

11.  Teach  me  thy  way,  O 
Jehovah  ;  let  me  walk  in  thy 
truth  :  unite  my  heart  to  fear 
thy  name. 

12.  I  Avill  praise  thee,  0 
Lord  my  God,  with  all  my 
heart :  and  I  will  glorify  thy 
name  for  ever. 

13.  For  great  is  thy  mercy 
towards  me  :  and  thou  hast 
delivered  my  soul  from  deep 
Sheol  (the  place  of  the  dead). 

14.  0  God,  proud  men  are 
risen  against  me,  and  an  as- 
sembly  of  tyrants   seek    my 


2.  Ps.  XXV.  20. — "  Preserve  my  soul  and 
deliver  me  :  let  me  not  be  ashamed,  for  I 
take  refuge  with  thee. " 

3.  Current  phrases ;  e.g.  Ps.  xxx.  8. — 
"To  thee,  0  Jehovah,  I  cry;"  ver.  10 — 
**  Hear,  0  Jehovah,  and  be  gracious  to  me." 

4.  a.  Ps.  xc.  15. — "Make  us  glad;" 
li.  8. — "Make  me  hear  joy  and  gladness," 
etc. 

h.  Ps.  XXV.  1. — "Unto  thee,  Jehovah, 
I  lift  up  my  soul." 

5.  Modification  of  Exod.  xxxiv.  6,  7. — 
"  Abundant  in  mercy  .  .  .  forgiving  ini- 
quity." 


6.  Ps.  V. 
Jehovah  . 
cry. " 


2. — "  Give  ear  to  my  words, 
hearken  to  the  voice  of  my 


7.  Ps.  cxx.  1. — **I  called  to  Jehovah  in 
my  distress,  and  he  answered  me  ;  Ixxvii. 
2. — "In  the  day  of  my  distress  I  sought 
the  Lord." 

8.  Ex.  XV.  11.  — '*Who  is  like  thee 
among  the  gods,  0  Jehovah  ?"  Dent.  iii. 
24. — "  Who  is  a  God  that  can  do  like  thy 
works  ?" 

9.  Ps.  xxii.  27.— "All  ends  of  the  earth 
shall  .  .  .  return  unto  Jehovah,  aud  be- 
fore thee  shall  all  families  of  the  nations 
worship." 

10.  Ex.  XV.  11.— "Doing  wonders." 


11.  a,  Ps.  xxvii.  11. — "Teach  me  thy 
way,  0  Jehovah;"  xxv.  5. — "Guide  me 
in  thy  truth. " 

6.  Jer.  xxxii.  39. — "  I  will  give  them  one 
heart,  and  one  way  to  fear  me  continually." 

12.  Ps.  ix.  1. — "I  will  praise  thee, 
Jehovah,  with  all  my  heart,"  etc. 


13.  a.  Ps.  Ivii.  10. — "  For  thy  mercy  is 
gi'eat  unto  the  heavens." 

h.  Ps.  Ivi.  13.— "For  thou  hast  deli- 
vered my  soul  from  death." 

14.  Ps.  liv.  3. — "For  strangers  are 
risen  against  me,  and  tyrants  seek  my  life 
who  have  not  set  God  before  them.     [In 


LECT.  VII.  ARABIC  POETS.  41; 


life  :  and   have   not  set  tliee  Hebrew,  **  proud  men  "  ZeDIM  and  stran- 

before  them.  gers  ZaRIM,  differ  by  a  single  letter,  and 

D  and  R  in  the  old  character  are  often  not 

to  be  distinguished.] 

15.  But  thou,  Lord,  art  a  15.  Quotation  from  Ex.  xxxiv.  6,  word 
God   merciful    and   gracious,  for  word. 

long-sutfering,   and  plenteous 
in  mercy  and  truth. 

16.  Turn  unto  me  and  be  16.  a.  Vs.  xrv.  16. — "Turn  unto  me, 
gracious    to    me  :    give    thy  and  be  gracious  to  me." 

strength    unto    thy   servant,  h.   God  the  strength  (protection)  of  his 

and  save  the  son  of  thy  hand-  people,  as   Ps.   xxviii.   8,  and  often  ;  Ps. 

maid.  cxvi.  16. — "I  am  thy  servant,  the  son  of 
thy  handmaid. " 

17.  Work  with  me  a  token  17.  Ps.  xl.  3. — "Many  shall  see  it  and 
(miracle)  for  good  :  that  they  fear;"  Ps.  vi.  10.  —  "Let  all  mine  ene- 
which  hate  me  may  see  it  and  mies  be  ashamed  and  sore  vexed,"  etc. 
be  ashamed  :  because  thou,  0  etc. 

Lord,    hast   holpen    me    and 
comforted  me. 

Note  6,  p.  190. — No  one  can  doubt  that  Psalm  cxlix.  is  a 
late  piece.  But  can  verses  6  seq^.  suit  any  situation  between  the 
Exile  and  the  Maccabee  wars  ? 

Note  7,  p.  191. — The  Hebrew  Slur  ham-ma  al 6th  cannot 
have  been  originally  prefixed  to  each  psalm,  for  it  does  not 
mean  "  a  song  of  ascents  "  but  "  the  song  of  ascents."  Gramma- 
tically the  title  can  only  be  explained  as  a  singular,  not  very 
correctly  formed,  from  a  previous  collective  title  Shire  ham- 
ma  aloth.  Of  this  again  the  proper  translation  is  not  "  the 
songs  of  ascents  "  (pi.),  but  "  the  songs  of  ascent "  (sing.).  It  is 
important  to  observe  in  this  instance  how  individual  titles  are 
derived  from  an  earlier  collective  title.  The  same  thing,  no 
doubt,  applies  to  the  Davidic  collections. — See  p.  198. 

Note  8,  p.  199. — Keil  has  the  courage  to  assert  that  the 
genuineness  of  the  titles  is  confirmed  by  the  practice  of  Arabian 
poets  to  prefix  their  names  to  their  songs ;  Introduction,  Eng.  Tr., 
vol.  i.  p.  457.  But  let  us  hear  Ahlwardt,  the  recognised  master 
of  this  branch  of  Arabic  literature,  in  his  Bemerhunrjen  iiber  die 
Aechtheit  der  alien  Arabischen  Gedichte,-p.  1  seq.  (Greifswald,  1872). 
"  Every  one  who  opens  the  collections  of  old  poems,  or  looks 
through  books  dealing  -with  the  oldest  Arabic  literature,  will 
find  that  a  great  many  ancient  poems  are  ascribed  now  to  this 
author  now  to  that.  It  is  undeniable  that  in  this  respect  great 
uncertainty  prevails,  and  this   is   easily  understood  when  we 


416  PSALM  LL  lect.  vii. 

consider,  in  general,  that  tlie  use  of  WTiting  for  larger  poems  was 
certainly  not  yet  current  in  tliose  days ;  tliat  the  distance  between 
the  time  of  the  poets  and  the  time  when  their  works  were  col- 
lected and  written  down  may  be  150  years  or  more.  .  .  .  Even 
in  later  times,  when  writing  was  fully  developed  and  literature 
sedulously  practised,  there  were  doubts  as  to  the  authorship  of 
many  poems."  The  whole  discussion  is  worth  notice  in  its 
bearing  on  the  Psalter. 

Note  9,  p.  202. — In  connection  with  this  acrostic  and  the 
similar  case  of  Psalm  xxxiv,,  Professor  de  Lagarde  suggests  that,  as 
in  later  Jewish  acrostics,  the  supernumerary  verses  may  indicate 
the  names  of  the  authors,  Phadael  and  Phadaiah  (Academy, 
January  1,  1872.     Symmida,  p.  107  ;  Gottingen,  1877). 

Note  10,  p.  204. — Many  would  be  gdad  to  rescue  the  au- 
thority of  the  titles  in  the  second  Davidic  collection  for  the  sake 
of  Psalm  li.  Yet  the  last  two  verses  of  the  Psalm,  with  the 
]3rayer  that  God  will  build  the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  refer  so 
manifestly  to  the  period  of  the  Captivity,  that  recent  supporters 
of  the  Davidic  authorship  are  usually  inclined  to  view  them  as 
a  later  addition  (Perowne,  Delitzsch).  But  every  one  can  see 
that  the  omission  of  these  verses  makes  the  Psalm  end 
abruptly,  and  a  closer  examination  reveals  a  connection  of 
thought  between  vv.  16,  17  (Heb.  18,  19)  and  vv.  18,  19  (Heb. 
20,  21).  At  present,  says  the  Psalmist,  God  desires  no  material 
sacrifice,  but  will  not  despise  a  contrite  heart.  How  does  the 
Psalmist  know  that  God  takes  no  pleasure  in  sacrifice  ?  Not  on 
the  principle  that  the  sacrifice  of  the  wicked  is  sin,  for  the  sacri- 
fice of  the  contrite  whose  person  God  accepts  must  be  acceptable 
if  any  sacrifice  is  so.  But  does  the  Psalmist  then  mean  to  say, 
absolutely  and  in  general,  that  sacrifice  is  a  superseded  thing  ? 
No  ;  for  he  adds  that  when  Jerusalem  is  rebuilt  the  sacrifice  of 
Israel  (not  merely  his  own  sacrifice)  will  be  pleasing  to  God. 
He  lives  therefore  in  a  time  when  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  has 
temporarily  suspended  the  sacrificial  ordinances,  but — and  this 
is  the  great  lesson  of  the  Psalm — has  not  closed  the  door  of  for- 
giveness to  the  penitent  heart. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  main  thought  of  the  Psahn,  and  see 
whether  it  does  not  suit  this  situation  as  well  as  the  supposed 
reference  to  the  life  of  David.  The  two  special  points  in  the 
Psalm  on  which  the  historical  reference  may  be  held  to  turn  are 
ver.  X-*,  "Deliver  me  from  blood-guiltiness,"  and  ver.  11,  "Take 


LECT.  VII.  PSALM  LI.  417 

not  thy  Holy  Spirit  from  me."  Under  tlie  Old  Testament  the 
Holy  Spirit  is  not  given  to  every  believer,  but  to  Israel  as  a 
nation  (Isa.  Ixiii.  10,  11),  residing  in  chosen  organs,  especially  in 
the  prophets,  who  are  iiar  excellence  "  men  of  the  Spirit "  (Hos.  ix. 
7).  But  the  Spirit  of  Jehovah  was  also  given  to  David  (1  Sam. 
xvi.  1 3  ;  2  Sam.  xxiii.  2).  The  Psalm  then,  so  far  as  this  phrase 
goes,  may  be  a  Psalm  of  Israel  collectively,  of  a  prophet,  or  of 
David.  Again,  the  phrase  "  Deliver  me  from  blood-guiltiness," 
is  to  be  understood  after  Psalm  xxxix.  8,  "  Deliver  me  from  all 
my  transgressions,  make  me  not  the  reproach  of  the  foolish." 
In  the  Old  Testament  the  experience  of  forgiveness  is  no  mere 
subjective  feeling  ;  it  rests  on  facts.  In  the  New  Testament  the 
assurance  of  forgiveness  lays  hold  of  the  work  and  victory  of 
Christ,  it  lies  in  the  actual  realisation  of  victory  over  the  world 
in  Him.  In  the  Old  Testament,  in  like  manner,  some  saving 
act  of  God  is  the  evidence  of  forgiveness.  The  sense  of  forgive- 
ness is  the  joy  of  God's  salvation  (verse  12),  and  the  word  "  sal- 
vation "  i^^)  is,  I  believe,  always  used  of  some  visible  delivery 
and  enlargement  from  distress.  God's  wrath  is  felt  in  His  chas- 
tisement. His  forgiveness  in  the  removal  of  affliction,  when  His 
people  cease  to  be  the  reproach  of  the  foolish.  Hence  the  ex- 
pression "  deliver  me."  But  blood-guiltiness  (D'^Dl)  does  not 
necessarily  mean  the  guilt  of  murder.  It  means  mortal  sin 
(Ezek.  xviii.  13),  such  sin  as,  if  it  remains  unatoned,  withdraws 
God's  favour  from  His  land  and  people  (Deut,  xxi.  8  seq. ;  Isa.  i. 
15).  Bloodshed  is  the  typical  ofience  among  those  which  under 
the  ancient  law  of  the  First  Legislation  are  not  to  be  atoned  for 
by  a  pecuniary  compensation,  but  demand  the  death  of  the 
sinner.  The  situation  of  the  Psalm  therefore  does  not  neces- 
sarily presuppose  such  a  case  as  David's.  It  is  equally  applicable 
to  the  prophet,  labouring  under  a  deep  sense  that  he  has  dis- 
charged his  calling  inadequately  and  may  have  the  guilt  of  lost 
lives  on  his  head  (Ezek.  xxxiii.),  or  to  collective  Israel  in  the 
Capti^dty,  when,  according  to  the  prophets,  it  was  the  guilt  of 
blood  equally  with  the  guilt  of  idolatry  that  removed  God's 
favour  from  His  land  (Jer.  vii.  6  ;  Hosea  iv.  2,  vi.  8  ;  Isa.  iv.  4). 
Nay,  from  the  Old  Testament  point  of  view,  in  which  the  ex- 
perience of  wTath  and  forgiveness  stands  generally  in  such  im- 
mediate relation  to  Jehovah's  actual  dealings  with  the  nation, 
the  whole  thought  of  the  Psalm  is  most  simply  understood  as  a 
prayer  for  the   restoration  and  sanctification  of  Israel  in  the 


418  PSALM  LI.  LECT.  viii. 

mouth  of  a  prophet  of  tlie  Exile.  For  the  immediate  fruit  of 
forgiveness  is  that  the  singer  will  resume  the  prophetic  function 
of  teaching  sinners  Jehovah's  ways  (ver.  13),  This  is  little  ap- 
propriate to  David,  whose  natural  and  right  feeling  in  connection 
with  his  great  sin  must  rather  have  been  that  of  silent  humilia- 
tion than  of  an  instant  desire  to  preach  his  forgiveness  to  other 
sinners.  The  whole  experience  of  David  with  Nathan  moves  in 
another  plane.  The  Psalmist  writes  out  of  the  midst  of  present 
judgments  of  God  (the  Captivity).  To  Da\id,  the  pain  of  death, 
remitted  on  his  repentance,  lay  in  the  future  (2  Sam.  xii.  13)  as 
an  anticipated  judgment  of  God,  the  remission  of  which  would 
hardly  produce  the  exultant  joy  of  ver.  12.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  whole  thought  of  the  Psalm,  as  Hitzig  points  out  and 
Delitzsch  acknowledges,  moves  in  exact  parallel  with  the  spiritual 
experience  of  Israel  in  the  Exile  as  conceived  in  connection  with 
the  personal  experience  of  a  prophet  in  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  The  Psalm 
is  a  psalm  of  the  true  Israel  of  the  Exile  in  the  mouth  of  a  pro- 
phet, perhaps  of  the  very  prophet  who  wrote  the  last  chapters  of 
the  book  of  Isaiah. 

Lecture  VIII. 

Note  1,  p.  208. — On  the  subject  of  this  and  the  following 
Lectures  the  most  important  book  is  Wellhausen's  Geschichte 
Israels  (Erster  Band,  Berlin,  1878).  Among  older  works 
Vatke's  Religion  des  alien  Testamenls  (Erster  Theil,  Berlin,  1835) 
is  of  the  greatest  value,  but,  being  encumbered  with  a  mass  of 
Hegelian  terminology  of  a  repulsive  kind,  it  practically  remained 
unnoticed  till  inquiry  was  redirected  into  similar  channels  by 
the  writings  of  Graf  {De  Templo  Silonensi,  Meissen,  1855  ;  Die 
geschichtlichen  Biicher  des  alien  Testaments,  1866  ;  Zar  Geschichte 
des  Stammes  Levi  in  Merx's  Archiv,  1870).  Graf  was  also  neglected 
in  Germany,  under  the  dominant  influence  of  the  Gottingen  and 
Halle  schools,  but  his  point  of  view  was  taken  up  hj  Kuenen  in 
Holland,  and  was  for  a  time  supposed  to  be  necessarily  connected 
with  ultra-rationalism.  Since  the  appearance  of  Wellhausen's 
book  there  are  many  signs  that  critics  of  every  school  are  rapidly 
coming  to  be  at  one  on  the  main  facts  of  the  religious  history  of 
Israel.  In  the  interpretation  of  the  facts,  differences  of  theolo- 
gical standpoint  will  no  doubt  continue  ^to  assert  themselves,  as 
they  did  to  an  equal  or  greater  extent  when  no  one  doubted  that 
Moses  \YioU  the  whole  Pentateuch. 


LECT.  VIII.  THE  CHRONICLES.  419 

Note  2,  p.  219. — Mohammed  boasts  of  his  fabulous  version 
of  the  history  of  Joseph  that  he  has  it  by  direct  revelation,  not 
having  known  it  before  ;  Koran,  Sura  xii.  3.  The  Biblical  liis- 
torians  never  make  such  a  claim,  which  to  a  thinking  mind  is 
one  of  the  clearest  proofs  of  Mohammed's  imposture.  It  is 
worth  while  to  see  how  Astruc  speaks  on  this  topic  more  than  a 
century  ago.  Mc\uy  theologians  do  not  think  so  clearly  now. 
"  Moyse  parle  toujours,  dans  la  Genese,  comma  un  simple  his- 
torien,  11  ne  dit  nulle  part  que  ce  qu'il  raconte,  lui  ait  este  in- 
spire. On  ne  doit  done  point  supposer  cette  revelation  sans 
aucun  fondement.  Quand  les  Prophetes  out  parle  de  choses, 
qui  leur  avoient  este  revelees,  ils  n'ont  point  manque  d'avertir 
qu'ils  parloient  an  nom  de  Dieu,  et  de  sa  part  ;  et  c'est  ainsi  que 
Moyse  en  a  use  lui  mesme,  dans  les  autres  Livres  du  Penta- 
teuque,  quand  il  a  eu  quelque  revelation  a  communiquer 
au  peuple  Hebreu,  ou  quelque  ordre  de  Dieu  a  lui  intimer. 
Auroit-il  neglige  la  mesme  precaution,  en  composant  le  Livre  de 
la  Genese,  s'il  s'etoit  trouve  dans  les  mesmes  circonstances  ? " 
{Conjectures  sur  la  Genese,  p.  5,  Bruxelles,  1753).  When  it  is 
admitted  that  the  Bible  history  is  based  upon  written  sources, 
oral  testimony,  and  personal  observation,  no  theory  of  inspira- 
tion can  alter  the  principle  that  the  knowledge  of  the  ^Titers 
was  limited  by  their  sources.  Whatever  they  say  which  they 
did  not  find  in  their  sources  is  not  evidence,  but  commentary. 
On  the  question  of  fact,  what  the  actual  social  and  religious 
observances  of  Israel  before  the  Exile  were,  the  Chronicler  can 
tell  us  nothing  which  he  had  not  read  in  earlier  authentic  his- 
tory. Anything  which  he  adds  to  his  sources  is  historical  evi- 
dence for  the  state  of  things  in  his  ow^n  time — which  he  may 
use  to  fill  up  his  picture  and  give  it  colour — but  not  for  the  state 
of  things  before  the  Exile.  Now,  that  the  author  of  Chronicles 
does  use  the  ritual  and  standing  ordinances  of  his  ow^n  time  to 
give  copiousness  of  detail  to  his  pictures  of  ancient  events,  and 
bring  them  more  vividly  before  the  minds  of  his  readers,  is 
quite  certain  from  comparison  of  his  narrative  -with  that  of 
Kings.  In  doing  so  he  does  no  more  than  is  habitually  done 
without  off'ence  in  the  pulpit.  The  Bible  history,  as  para- 
phrased by  a  graphic  modern  preacher,  is  always  coloured  with 
the  nationality  of  the  speaker,  and  assimilated  in  greater  or  less 
degree  to  the  life  of  his  own  time.  What  is  innocent,  and  in- 
deed inevitable,  in  an  uninspired  preacher  may  surely  have  hap- 


420  CHRONICLES  lect.  viii. 

pened  in  Bible  times.  And  that  the  Chronicler  is  not  so  much 
a  historian  as  a  Levitical  preacher  on  the  old  history,  is  plain 
from  the  whole  manner  of  his  book,  and  from  the  fact  that  he 
actually  quotes  among  his  sources  a  Midrash  (E.V.  story),  or  per- 
haps two  books  of  this  character.  The  word  Midrash  is  not 
found  in  earlier  parts  of  the  Old  Testameut  ;  and  w^hen  we  con- 
sider the  date  of  the  Chronicles,  there  can  1^  no  hesitation  in 
giving  to  the  word  its  ordinary  meaning — viz.,  that  of  a  sermon- 
ising exjjosition,  such  as  w^as  familiar  in  the  preaching  of  the 
synagogue  in  the  age  of  the  Scribes.  Midrash  is  a  thing  so  un- 
familiar to  us  that  we  are  apt  to  think  it  impossible  that  any- 
tliing  of  the  kind  should  be  found  in  the  Bible.  But  we  are  not 
entitled  to  say  a  priori  that  any  style  of  literature  that  was 
freely  practised  and  perfectly  understood  in  those  days  must 
have  been  excluded  by  Divine  providence  from  the  Canon  as  it 
w^as  ultimately  shaped.  But  in  proportion  as  the  Chronicles 
have  the  complexion  of  a  Midrash  they  are  improper  to  be 
directly  used  in  a  purely  historical  investigation  into  the  ritual 
and  usages  of  pre-Exilic  times. 

Without  professing  to  offer  a  positive  solution  of  the  ques- 
tions which  these  remarks  suggest,  I  shall  close  this  note  with 
some  illustrations  of  the  relation  of  Chronicles  to  Kings,  which 
seem  sufficient  to  prove  that  the  former  books  cannot  safely  be 
used  in  the  way  common  to  recent  defenders  of  the  traditional 
view  of  the  Pentateuch  : — 

1°.  1  Kings  viii.  3  :  "  The  priests  took  up  the  ark."  2 
Cliron.  V.  4  :  "  The  Levites  took  up  the  ark."  In  this  whole 
passage  the  Chronicles  have  no  other  source  than  the  narrative 
of  Kings,  which,  for  the  most  part,  is  verbally  followed.  That 
the  ark  w^as  carried  by  the  priests  is  in  accordance  with  Deut. 
xxxi.  and  the  whole  pre-Exilic  history  (Josh.  iii.  3,  vi.  6,  viii. 
33  ;  1  Sam.  vi.  15  (compared  with  Josh.  xxi.  16)  ;  2  Sam.  xv. 
24,  29).  The  statement  in  Chronicles  is  a  correction  in  accord- 
ance with  the  Levitical  law. 

2°.  In  2  Kings  xxiii.  Josiah's  action  against  the  high  places  is 
represented  as  taking  place  in  his  eighteenth  year,  as  the  imme- 
diate result  of  his  repentance  on  hearing  the  words  of  the  law 
found  in  the  Temple,  and  in  pursuance  of  the  covenant  of  refor- 
mation. In  2  Chron,  xxxiv.  the  reformation  begins  in  his  eighth 
year,  and  the  land  is  purged  before  the  book  of  the  law  is  found 
(ver.  8). 


LECT.  viiT.  AND  KINGS.  421 

3°.  In  2  Kings  xi.  Jehoiada's  assistants  in  the  revolution 
which  cost  Athaliah  her  life,  are  the  foreign  bodyguard  which 
we  know  to  have  been  emplo^-ed  in  the  sanctuary  up  to  the  time 
of  Ezekiel  (see  p.  249).  lu  2  Chron.  xxiii.,  the  Caiians  and 
the  footguards  are  replaced  by  Levites.  No  doubt  the  guard 
were  the  Le^dtes  of  the  First  Temple.  They  did  those  services 
which  the  Levites  did  in  the  Second  Temple.  But  they  were 
not  Levites  in  the  sense  of  the  Pentateuch,  but,  in  part  at  least, 
uncircumcised  foreigners. 

4°.  According  to  2  Kings  xii.,  the  support  of  the  Temple 
fabric  in  the  early  years  of  Jehoash  was  a  burden  on  the  priestly 
revenues  brought  into  the  house  by  worshippers.  In  2  Chron. 
xxiv.,  it  appears  as  defrayed  by  a  special  collection  made  through 
all  Judah  (see  p.  252,  and  Wellhausen,  Gesch.,  p.  206  seq.). 

5°.  The  speeches  in  Chronicles  are  not  literal  reports.  They 
are  freely  composed  without  strict  reference  to  the  exact 
liistorical  situation.  Compare,  for  example,  the  correspondence 
between  Solomon  and  Hiram  (1  Kings  v.  3-9;  2  Chron.  ii.  3-16). 
Thus  in  Abijah's  speech  on  the  field  of  battle  (2  Chron.  xiii.  4 
seq.),  the  king  is  made  to  say  that  Jeroboam's  rebellion  took 
place  when  Rehoboam  was  a  mere  lad  and  tender-hearted,  and 
had  not  courage  to  withstand  the  rebels.  The  mere  lad  OV^), 
according  to  1  Kings  xiv.  21,  was  forty-one  years  old.  Abijah 
then  proceeds  to  boast  of  the  regular  temple  service  conducted 
according  to  Levitical  law.  But  the  ser^^ce  described  is  that 
of  the  Second  Temple,  for  the  king  speaks  of  the  golden  candle- 
stick as  one  of  its  elements.  In  Solomon's  Temple  there  stood 
not  one  golden  candlestick  in  the  holy  place  in  front  of  the 
adyton  ("I'^ai,  oracle,  i.e.  Holy  of  Holies)  but  ten  (1  Kings  vii.  49), 
Again,  the  morning  and  evening  burnt  oflferings  are  mentioned. 
But  there  is  a  great  concurrence  of  evidence  that  the  evening 
offering  was  purely  cereal  in  the  First  Temple,  or  indeed  in  the 
time  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  (1  Kings  xviii.  36,  Hebrew;  2 
Kings  xvi.  15  ;  Ezra  ix.  4,  Hebrew).  Compare  Kuenen's 
Religion  of  Israel,  chap,  ix.,  note  1.  This  speech  is  one  of  the 
clearest  proofs  that  the  Chronicler's  descriptions  of  ordinances 
are  taken  from  the  usage  of  his  own  time. 

6°.  Under  the  reign  of  David,  the  Chronicles  insert  a  very 

full  and  valuable  account  of  the  order  of  the  Levitical  service  of 

song,  etc.     But  the  order  is  that  of  the  Second  Temple.     The 

gates  and  the  like  described  in  1   Chron.  xxvi.  could  not  have 

19 


422  HOSE  A.  lect.  viii. 

existed  in  David's  time,  before  the  temple  was  built,  and  one  of 
them  has  a  Persian  name.  A  very  curious  point  remarked  by 
Ewald  (Lehrhuch,  §  274  b),  and  more  clearly  elucidated  by  Well- 
hausen,  is  that  six  heads  of  choirs  of  the  guild  of  Heman  bear 
the  names  (1)  I  have  given  great  (2)  and  lofty  help  (3)  to  him 
that  sat  in  distress  ;  (4)  I  have  spoken  (5)  a  superabundance  of 
(6)  prophecies  (1  Chron.  xxv.  4).  As  the  names  of  literal  indi- 
^'iduals  in  the  time  of  David,  these  names  are  incredible.  But 
the  words  seem  to  be  an  anthem  in  which  six  choirs  of  singers 
may  well  have  had  parts,  and  received  names  from  their  parts. 
In  like  manner  Jeduthun,  which,  if  the  description  of  the 
temple  music  is  literal  history  of  David's  time,  must  be  the 
name  of  a  man,  head  of  a  choir,  is  really,  as  we  see  from  the 
titles  of  the  Psalms,  a  musical  term.  The  complete  identifica- 
tion of  the  Levites  with  the  temple  singers  which  the  order  of 
Chronicles  sui)poses  was  not  yet  actual  in  the  time  of  Ezra  and 
Nehemiah. 

7°.  The  Kings  say  expressly  that  the  high  places  were  not 
removed  by  Asa  and  Jehoshaphat  though  their  hearts  were  per- 
fect with  Jehovah  (1  Kings  xv.  14  ;  xxii.  43).  The  Chronicler, 
on  the  contrary,  says  that  both  Asa  and  Jehoshaphat  abolished 
the  local  high  places  (2  Chron.  xiv.  5,  xvil  6),  which,  however, 
does  not  prevent  him  from  copying  the  opposite  statements  of  1 
Kings  in  connection  with  some  other  particulars  which  he  has 
occasion  to  transfer  from  that  book  (2  Chron.  xv.  17  ;  xx.  33). 

People  may  shake  their  heads  at  all  this  and  say,  You  are 
touching  the  historicity  of  the  book.  But  our  first  duty  is  to 
facts  ;  and  the  only  question  I  raise  is  whether  we  can  use  the 
Chronicles  to  correct  or  modify  unambiguous  statements  of  the 
earlier  books,  or  whether,  in  order  to  get  real  instruction  from 
the  later  history,  we  must  not  frankly  admit  that  its  descrip- 
tions of  ritual  often  belong  to  the  Chronicler's  own  time.  The 
proofs  of  this  might  be  greatly  multiplied.  See  especially  De 
Wette^s  Beitrage,  Bd.  1  (Halle,  1806),  and  Wellhausen's  Geschichte, 
p.  177  seq. 

Note  3,  p.  226. — The  English  version  of  Hosea  iii.  does  not 
clearlv  express  the  prophet's  thought.  Hosea's  wife  had  deserted 
him  lor  a  stranger.  But  though  she  is  thus  "in  love  with  a 
paramour,  and  unfaithful,"  his  love  follows  her,  and  he  buys  her 
back  out  of  the  servile  condition  into  which  she  appears  to  have 
fallen.     She  is  brought  back  from  shame  and  servitude,  but  not 


LECT.  viii.  lAHWE :  SHADDAL  423 

to  tlie  privileges  of  a  wife.  She  must  sit  alone  by  her  hushancl, 
reserved  for  him,  but  not  yet  restored  to  the  relations  of  wed- 
lock. So  Jehovah  will  deal  with  Israel,  when  by  destroying 
the  state  and  the  ordinances  of  worship  He  breaks  off  all  inter- 
course, not  only  between  Israel  and  the  Baalim,  but  between 
Israel  and  Himself.  See  on  the  whole  allegory  the  article 
HosEA  in  the  Ennjc.  Brit,  (ninth  edition). 

Note  4,  p.  227. — On  the  ephod,  see  Vatke,  ojj.  cit.  p.  2G7 
seq. ;  Studer  on  Judges  viii.  27.  The  passages  where  teraphim 
are  mentioned  in  the  Hebrew  but  not  in  the  English  version 
are,  Gen.  xxxi  19,  34,  35;  1  Sam.  xv.  23,  xix.  13,  16; 
2  Kings  xxiii.  24  ;  Zech.  x.  2.  Compare,  as  to  their  nature, 
Spencer,  De  Legibus  Ritiialihus  Hehrcsorum,  Lib.  iii.,  c.  3,  §  2  seq. 

Note  5,  p.  231. — Colenso  {Pentateuch^  Part  V.),  Lenormant 
[Lettres  Assyriologiques,  vol.  ii.),  Tiele,  Land,  and  others  have 
sought  to  prove  that  Jehovah  (lahwe)  is  a  name  borrowed  from 
Semitic  heathenism,  while  Brugsch  and  others  will  have  it  that 
the  Mosaic  conception  of  God  is  borrowed  from  the  Egyptians. 
The  latter  view  is  totally  untenable,  and  the  evidence  for  the 
former  breaks  down  upon  close  examination.  See  especially  the 
elaborate  discussion  in  Baudissin's  Studien,  voL  i  No.  3  (1876). 
That  the  name  lahwe  existed  in  a  narrower  circle  before  it 
became  through  Moses  the  recognised  name  of  Israel's  national 
God  (Exod.  vi.  3)  is  probable  ;  and  at  that  time  the  word  may 
have  had  a  much  less  lofty  interpretation  than  it  received  in 
Exod.  iii.  14.  The  physical  meaning  can  hardly  be  other  than 
he  who  causes  rain  or  lightning  to  fall  upon  the  earth.  Compare 
Gen.  xix.  24,  where  the  brimstone  and  fire  that  destroyed  Sodom 
are  said  to  fall  from  {lit.  from  beside)  lahwe  from  heaven  ;  and 
see  Lagarde,  Orientalia  II.  29. 

I  take  this  opportunity  to  explain  more  fully  than  I  have 
formerly  done  my  view  of  the  other  old  name  Shaddai,  recently 
cited  by  Mr.  Cheyne  in  his  commentary  on  Isaiah.  It  can  be 
shown  from  the  Greek  versions,  and  even  from  Jerome's  note, 
rohustus  et  sufficiens  ad  omnia  perpetranda,  that  the  oldest  form 
of  the  traditional  interpretation  of  the  name  is  not  "  almighty," 
but  "  sufficient,"  cKavos,  which  is  again  derived  from  the  Jewish 
traditional  etymology  from  the  relative  C'  and  n.  Now,  if  this 
etymology  is  so  ancient,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  punc- 
tuation wdth  pathach  under  the  second  radical  is  derived  from  it. 
But  it  is  this  punctuation  which  has  misled  many  scholars  to 


424  HIGH  PLACES.  lect.  viti. 

find  in  the  word  a  derivative  from  ITW  with  a  nominal  forma- 
tive affix.  Such  a  form  is  highly  improbable  in  an  old  divine 
name,  which  in  the  most  ancient  use  is  a  substantive,  not  an 
adjective  to  El ;  and  the  punctuation  loses  all  authority  when 
we  learn  that  it  expresses  an  impossible  etymology.  (Compare 
cases  like  niDPV.)  We  are  thus  entitled  to  regard  the  word  as 
an  intensive  from  m^,  Aram,  iny,  eshacl,  Arab,  thada,  to  pour 
forth,  and  the  name,  which  from  its  form  is  probably  of  Aramaic 
origin,  will  mean  the  god  who  gives  rain.  Compare  the  familiar 
fact  that  even  under  the  Mohammedan  empire  land  watered  by 
rain  from  heaven  is  named  hdl. 

Note  6,  p.  235. — In  some  of  these  cases,  evidence  that  the 
place  was  a  sanctuary  may  be  demanded.  Kadesh  is  proved  to  be 
so  by  its  very  name,  with  which  it  agrees  that  it  was  a  Levitical 
city  and  a  consecrated  asylum.  Accordingly  it  formed  the  ren- 
dezvous of  Zebulon  and  Naphtali  under  Barak  and  Deborah. 
Mahanaim  was  the  place  of  a  theophany,  from  which  it  had  its 
name.  It  was  also  a  Levitical  city,  and  Cant.  vi.  13  alludes  to 
the  "  dance  of  Mahanaim,"  which  was  probably  such  a  festal 
dance  as  took  place  at  Shiloh  (Jud.  xxL  21).  As  a  holy  place 
the  town  was  the  seat  of  Ishbosheth's  kingdom,  and  the  head- 
quarters of  David's  host  during  the  revolt  of  Absalom.  Tabor, 
on  the  frontiers  of  Zebulon  and  Issachar,  seems  to  be  the  moun- 
tain alluded  to  in  Dent,  xxxiii.  18,  19,  as  the  sanctuary  of  these 
tribes,  and  it  appears  along  with  Mizpah,  as  a  seat  of  degenerate 
priests,  in  Hos.  v.  1.  The  northern  Mizpah  is  identical  with 
Ramoth  Gilead.  and  with  the  sanctuary  of  Jacob  (Gen.  xxxi.  45 
seq.y 

Note  7,  p.  236. — Except  at  a  feast,  or  to  entertain  a  guest, 
or  in  sacrifice  before  a  local  shrine,  the  Bedouin  tastes  no  meat 
but  the  flesh  of  the  gazelle  or  other  game.  This  throws  light  on 
Deut.  xii.  22,  which  shows  that  in  old  Israel  game  was  the 
only  meat  not  eaten  sacrificially.  That  flesh  was  not  eaten  every 
day  even  by  wealthy  people  appears  very  clearly  from  Nathan's 
parable  and  from  the  book  of  Ruth.  The  wealthy  man,  like 
the  Arab  sheikh,  ate  the  same  fare  as  his  v/orkmen.  According 
to  MI  Nodes  (Calcutta  edition,  ii.  276),  eating  flesh  is  one  of 
the  three  elements  of  high  enjoyment. 


LECT.  IX.  JOSIAH'S  LA  IVBOOK.  425 


in^'s 

xxiii.  5 

w 

„     7 

w 

„     9 

» 

„  10 

» 

„  11 

» 

„  14 

w 

„  21 

)» 

„  24 

Lecture  IX. 

Note  1,  p.  246. — Critics  distinguish  in  Deuteronomy  the 
legislative  code  (chaps,  xii.-xxvi.)  and  the  framework,  wliich 
appears  to  be  by  a  different  hand  or  hands.  In  all  probability 
the  code  once  stood,  along  with  an  introduction,  in  a  separate 
book  corresponding  to  Deut.  iv.  44-xxvi.  19.  There  is  no  evi- 
dence that  Josiah  had  more  than  this  book,  and  even  the  Fathers 
identify  the  book  found  in  the  Temple  with  Deuteronomy.  So 
Jerome,  Adv.  Jovin.^  i.  5  ;  Chrysostom,  Horn,  in  Mat.  ix.  p.  135  B. 
The  relation  of  his  reformation  to  Deuteronomy  may  be  shown 
thus  : — 

.         ,  Deut.  xii.  2. 

•  •  „       xxiii.  17,  18. 

•  •  „      xviii.  8. 

•  •  „      xviii.   10. 
,  „       xvii.  3. 

„       xvi.  21,  22. 
„       xvi.  5. 
.  .  „      xviii.  11. 

Compare  further  Wellhausen,  Composition  des  Hexateuchs,  III,  in 
Jahrbb.  f.  Deut.  Theol.,  1877,  pp.  458  scq. 

Note  2,  p.  248. — The  Pillars  of  Hercules  are  identical  with 
the  two  steles  or  maggehoth  of  the  Tyrian  Melkart,  described  by 
Herodotus,  Bk.  ii.  chap.  44,  and  were  carried  westward  by  the 
Phoenician  navigators  and  colonists.  Two  huge  pillars  similar 
to  those  of  Solomon  stood  in  the  propylcea  of  the  temple  of 
Hierapolis.     See  Lucian,  De  Syria  Dea,  chap.  16,  28. 

Note  3,  p.  248. — This  passage  is  so  important  that  I  give  it 
in  a  translation,  slightly  corrected  after  the  versions  in  vv.  7,  8, 
as  already  printed  in  my  Answer  to  tJie  Amended  Libel  (1878). 
The  corrections  are  obvious,  and  have  been  made  also  by  Smend 
(Der  Prophet  Ezechiel  erJdcirt,  Leipz.,  1880). 

Ezek.  xliv.  6.  O  house  of  Israel !  Have  done  with  all  your 
abominations,  (7)  in  tliat  ye  bring  in  foreigners  uncircumcised 
in  heart  and  flesh  to  be  in  my  sanctuary,  polluting  my  house, 
when  ye  offer  my  bread,  the  fat,  and  tlie  blood  ;  and  so  ye  break 
my  covenant  in  addition  to  all  your  abominations,  (8)  and  keep 
not  the  charge  of  my  holy  things,  but  appoint  them  as  keepers 
of  my  charge  in  my  sanctuary.     Therefore,  (9)  thus  saith  the 


42G  THE  FOREIGN  GUARDS.  lect.  ix. 


my  sanctuary — no  foreigner  whatever,  who  is  among  the  chil- 
dren of  Israel.'  (10)  But  the  Levites,  because  they  departed 
from  me  when  Israel  went  astray,  when  they  went  astray  from 
me  after  their  idols,  even  they  shall  bear  their  guilt,  (11)  and 
be  ministers  in  my  sanctuary,  officers  at  the  gates  of  the  house, 
and  ministers  of  the  house  ;  it  is  they  who  shall  kill  the  burnt- 
offering  and  the  sacrifice  for  the  people,  and  it  is  they  who  shall 
stand  before  them  to  minister  unto  them.  (12)  Because  they 
ministered  unto  them  before  their  idols,  and  were  a  stumbling- 
block  of  guilt  to  the  house  of  Israel,  therefore  I  swear  concerning 
them,  saitli  the  Lord  God,  that  they  shall  bear  their  guilt,  (13) 
and  shall  not  draw  near  to  me  to  do  the  office  of  a  priest  to  me, 
or  to  touch  any  of  my  holy  things — the  most  holy  things  ;  but 
they  shall  bear  their  shame  and  their  abominations  which  they 
have  done.  (14)  And  I  will  make  them  keepers  of  the  charge 
of  the  house  for  all  the  service  thereof,  and  for  all  that  is  to  be 
done  about  it.  (15)  But  the  Levite  priests,  the  sons  of  Zadok, 
who  kept  the  charge  of  my  sanctuary  when  the  children  of 
Israel  went  astray  from  me — they  shall  come  near  unto  me  to 
minister  unto  me,  and  they  shall  stand  before  me  to  offer  imto 
me  the  fat  and  the  blood,  saith  the  Lord  God.  They  shall  enter 
into  my  sanctuary  and  approach  my  table,  ministering  unto  me, 
and  keep  my  charge. 

Note  4,  p.  250. — There  is,  I  think,  good  ground  for  -sup- 
posing that  the  slaughtering  of  sacrifices,  which  Ezekiel  expressly 
assigns  in  future  to  the  Levites,  was  formerly  the  work  of  the 
guards.  It  was  the  king  who  provided  the  ordinary  temple 
sacrifices  (2  Chron.  viii.  13,  xxxi.  3  ;  Ezek.  xlv.  17),  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  the  animals  killed  for  the  royal  table 
were  usually  offered  as  peace  offerings  at  the  temple  (Dent  xii. 
21).  In  Saul's  time,  at  least,  an  unclean  person  could  not  sit  at 
the  royal  table,  which  implies  that  the  food  was  sacrificial  (1 
Sam.  XX.  26  ;  Lev.  vii.  20  ;  Deut.  xii.  22).  Now  the  Hebrew 
name  for  "  captain  of  the  guard  "  is  "  chief  slaughterer  "  {rah 
hattahhdchtm) — an  expression  wdiich,  so  far  as  one  can  judge 
from  Syriac  and  Arabic  as  well  as  Hebrew,  can  only  mean 
slaughterer  of  cattle  (comp,  HllDD,  Euting,  Pun.  Steine,  p.  16). 
So  the  bodyguard  were  also  the  royal  butchers,  an  occupation 
not  deemed  unworthy  of  warriors  in  early  times.  Eurip.  Electra, 
815.     Odys.  A.  108.     In  Lev.  i.  5,  6  it  is  assumed  that  every 


LECT.  IX.  ZADOKITES.  427 

man  kills  his  own  sacrifice,  and  so  still  in  the  Arabian  desert 
even'-  person  knows  how  to  kill  and  dress  a  sheep. 

Note  5,  p.  254. — According  to  1  Sam.  ii.  27-36  the  whole 
clan  or  "  father's  house "  of  Eli,  the  family  which  received 
God's  revelation  in  Egypt  with  a  promise  of  everlasting  priest- 
hood, is  to  lose  its  prerogative  and  sink  to  an  inferior  position,  in 
which  its  survivors  shall  be  glad  to  crouch  before  the  new  high 
priest  for  a  place  in  one  of  the  inferior  priestly  guilds  which 
may  yield  them  a  livelihood.  As  1  Kings  ii.  27  regards  this 
prophecy  as  fulfilled  in  the  substitution  of  Zadok  for  Abiathar,  it 
is  plain  that  the  former  did  not  belong  to  the  high-priestly  family 
chosen  in  the  "\\'ildemes3.  That  his  genealogy  is  traced  to  Aaron 
and  Eleazar  in  1  Chron.  vi.  50  stq^.  does  not  disprove  this,  for 
among  all  Semites  membership  of  a  guild  is  figured  as  sonship. 
Thus  in  the  time  of  the  Chronicles  sons  of  Eleazar  and  Ithamar 
respectively  would  mean  no  more  than  the  higher  and  lower 
guilds  of  priests.  The  common  theory  that  the  house  of  Eli 
was  not  in  the  original  line  of  Eleazar  and  Phinehas  is  incon- 
sistent with  Num.  xxv.  13  compared  with  1  Sam.  ii.  30.  Tlie 
Chronicler  places  Ahimelech  son  of  Abiathar  in  the  lower  priest- 
hood of  Ithamar  (1  Chron.  xxiv.  3,  6),  but  Abiathar  himself  is 
not  connected  with  Ithamar  by  a  genealogical  line.  The  deposi- 
tion of  the  father  reduces  the  son  to  the  lower  guild,  i 

Note  6,  p.  257.— 1  Sam.  i.  20,  21.  "When  the  new  year 
came  roimd,  Hannah  conceived  and  bare  a  son,  and  named  him 
.  .  .  and  Elkanah  went  up  with  his  whole  household  to  sacrifice 
to  Jehovah  the  yearly  sacrifice  and  his  vow."  The  date  of  the 
new  year  belongs  to  the  last  of  this  series  of  events.  Compare 
Wellhausen,  Text  Samuelis,  p.39  ;  Ge^chichte hrae!s,-p.  97  seq.,  Ill, 
note.  The  autumn  feast  was  also  the  great  feast  at  Jerusalem 
(1  Kings  viii.  2),  and  in  the  Northern  Kingdom  (1  Kings  xii.  32). 

In  Judges  ix.  27  read,  "  They  trode  the  grapes  and  made 
killAlim  (a  sacred  offering  in  praise  of  God  from  the  fruits  of  the 
earth,  Lev.  xix.  24),  and  went  into  the  house  of  their  god  and 
feasted,"  etc. 

Note  7,  p.  266. — Some  other  examples  of  irregiilarities  in 
the  ritual  of  Israel  before  the  Captivity  may  be  here  appended. 
(1)  According  to  the  LeWtical  law  it  is  the  function  of  the  Levites 
to  carry  the  ark.  In  the  history,  the  ark  is  either  borne  by  the 
priests  (Josh.  iii.  3,  vi.  6,  viii.  33  ;  1  Kings  viii.  3)  or  conveyed 
in  a  cart  (2  Sam.  vi.  3).     In  2  Sam,  xv.  24,  29,  the  Levites  aid 


i23  URIM  AND  lect.  x. 

the  cliief  priests  in  carrying  the  ark,  but  it  must  be  remembered 
that  before  Ezekiel  priests  and  Levites  are  not  two  separate 
classes.  The  Levites  in  the  early  history  are  the  priestly  guild 
and  family  (see  p.  359  seg-.).  (2)  On  the  use  of  sacred  symbols 
prohibited  in  the  Law,  see  p.  353  se^.  (3)  Under  the  Law  the 
Levites  and  priests  had  a  right  of  common  round  their  cities,  but 
this  pasture  ground  was  inalienable  (Lev.  xxv.  34),  so  that 
1  Kings  ii.  26,  Jer.  xxxii.  7,  where  priests  own  and  sell  fields, 
are  irregular. 

Lecture  X. 

Note  1,  p.  268. — Compare  especially  Duhm,  Theologie  der 
Propheten  (Bonn,  1875),  and  Wellhausen's  Gesckichte  JsraeZs,  Kap. 
10. 

Note  2,  p.  270. — For  the  subject  here  touched  on  I  refer  in 
general  to  the  arguments  and  authorities  adduced  in  my  essay 
on  Animal-worship,  etc.,  in  the  Journal  of  Philology,  ix.  75  seq. 
In  Psalm  xlv.  1 2  render,  "  And,  0  daughter  of  Tyre,  with  a  gift 
shall  the  rich  among  the  people  entreat  thy  favour." 

Note  3,  p.  278. — Plato,  Timceus,  cap.  xxxii.  p.  71  I>.  The 
mantic  faculty  belongs  to  the  part  of  the  soul  settled  in  the  liver, 
because  that  part  has  no  share  in  reason  and  thought.  "  For 
inspired  and  true  divination  is  not  attained  to  by  any  one  when 
in  his  full  senses,  but  only  when  the  power  of  thought  is  fettered 
by  sleep  or  disease  or  some  paroxysm  of  frenzy." 

This  view  of  inspiration  is  diametrically  opposite  to  that  of 
S.  Paul  (1  Cor.  xiv.  32),  and  the  complete  seK-consciousness  and 
seK-control  of  the  prophets  taught  in  that  passage  belong  equally 
to  the  spiritual  prophecy  of  the  Old  Testament.  Plato's  theory, 
however,  was  applied  to  the  prophets  by  Philo,  the  Jewish  Plato- 
nist,  who  describes  the  prophetic  state  as  an  ecstasy  in  which  the 
human  vovs  disappears  to  make  way  for  the  divine  Spirit  (Quis 
rernm  div.  haeres,  §  53,  Mang.  i.  p.  511).  Something  similar  has 
been  taught  in  recent  times  by  Hengstenberg  and  others, — sub- 
stituting, as  we  observe,  the  pagan  for  the  Biblical  conception  of 
revelation. 

Note  4,  p.  285. — In  ancient  times  the  priestly  oracle  of 
Urim  and  Thummim  was  a  sacred  lot ;  for  in  1  Sam.  xiv.  41 
the  true  text,  as  we  can  still  restore  it  from  the  LXX.,  makes 
Saul  pray.  If  the  iniquity  be  in  me  or  Jonathan,  give  Urim ;  but 
if  in  Israel,  give  Thummim.     This  sacred  lot  was  connected  with 


LECT.  X.  THUMMIM.  429 

tlie  ephocl,  wliicli  in  the  time  of  the  Judges  was  something  very 
like  an  idol  (p.  227  and  note).  Spencer  therefore  sei'ms  to  be 
right  in  assuming  a  resemblance  in  point  of  form  between  the 
priestly  lot  of  the  Urini  and.  Tliummim  and.  divination  by 
Teraphim  {Be  Leg.  Bit.,  lib.  iii.  c.  3).  The  latter  again  appears 
as  practised  by  drawing  lots  by  arrows  before  the  idol  (Ezek. 
xxi.  21,  "he  shook  the  arrows  "),  which  was  also  a  familiar  form 
of  divination  among  the  heathen  Arabs  (Ibn  Hisham,  97;  C.  de 
Perceval,  Essai  sur  Vhistoire  des  Arabes,  1847,  ii.  310).  The  very 
name  of  Thummini  seems  to  reappear  in  the  Arabic  tamdHm  (Im- 
raulkais,  Moal.,  14  ;  Lagarde,  Froph.  Chald.,  xlvii.).  Under  the 
Levitical  law  the  priestly  lot  exists  in  theory  in  a  very  modified 
fiirm,  confined  to  the  high  priest,  but  in  reality  it  was  obsolete 
(Neh.  vii.  65). 

JS'oTE  5,  p.  287. — The  argument  of  Amos  v.  25  is  obscured 
in  the  English  translation  by  the  rendering  of  the  following 
verse.  The  verbs  in  that  verse  are  not  perfects,  and  the  idea 
is  not  that  in  the  wilderness  Israel  sacrificed  to  Moloch  and 
Saturn  (Keiwan)  in  place  of  Jehovah.  Verse  26  commences  the 
prophecy  of  judgment,  "Ye  shall  take  np  your  idols,  and  (not 
as  E.V.  "  therefore  ")  I  will  send  you  into  captivity." 

Note  6,  p.  291. — The  Greek  doctrine  of  the  inspiration  of 
the  poet  never  led  to  the  recognition  of  certain  poems  as  sacred 
Scriptures.  But  the  Indian  Vedas  were  regarded  in  later  times 
as  infallible,  eternal,  divine.  In  the  priestly  bards,  therefore  (the 
liUhis),  the  first  authors  of  the  Vedic  hymns,  we  may  expect  to 
find,  if  anywhere,  a  consciousness  analogous  to  that  of  the  pro- 
phets. Their  accounts  of  themselves  have  been  collected  by  Dr. 
John  Muir  in  his  Sanscrit  Texts,  vol.  iii.,  and  some  recent  writers 
have  laid  great  stress  on  this  supposed  parallel  to  prophetic  in- 
spiration. But  what  are  the  facts  ?  The  Rishis  frequently  speak 
of  their  hymns  as  their  own  works,  but  also  sometimes  entertain 
the  idea  that  their  prayers,  praises,  and  ceremonies  generally 
were  super  naturally  inspired.  The  gods  are  said  to  "  generate  " 
prayer ;  the  prayer  is  god-given.  The  poet,  like  a  Grecian 
singer,  calls  on  the  gods  to  help  his  prayer.  "  May  prayer,  bril- 
liant and  divine,  proceed  from  us."  But  in  all  this  there  is  no 
stricter  conception  of  inspiration  than  in  the  Greek  poets.  It 
is  not  the  word  of  God  that  we  hear,  but  the  poet's  word  aided 
by  the  gods  (compare  Muir,  p.  275).  How  difi'erent  is  this 
from  the  language  of  the  prophets  !     "  Where  do  the  prophets," 


430  MOHAMMED.  lect.  x, 

asks  Merx  {Jenaer  Lit.  Zelt.,  1876,  p.  19)  "pray  for  illumina- 
tion of  spirit,  force  of  poetic  expression,  glowing  power  of  com- 
position ? "  In  truth,  as  Merx  concludes,  Kuenen  still  owes  us 
the  proof  of  his  statement  that  other  ancient  nations  share  the 
prophetic  consciousness  of  inspiration.  That  consciousness  is  as 
clearly  separated  from  the  inspiration  of  the  heathen  /xavrts  as 
from  the  afflatus  of  the  Indian  or  Grecian  bard. 

On  Mohammed's  inspiration  see  Noldeke,  Geschichte  des  Qordns, 
p.  4.  *'  He  not  only  gave  out  his  later  revelations,  composed 
with  conscious  deliberation  and  the  use  of  foreign  materials,  as 
being,  equally  with  the  first  glow^ing  productions  of  his  enthu- 
siasm, angelic  messages  and  proofs  of  the  prophetic  spirit,  but 
made  direct  use  of  pious  fraud  to  gain  adherents,  and  employed 
the  authority  of  the  Koran  to  decide  and  adjust  things  that  had 
nothing  to  do  with  religion." 

Note  7,  p.  304. — Projjerly  to  understand  the  prophetic  doc- 
trine of  forgiveness,  we  must  remember  that  the  problem  of  the 
acceptance  of  the  individual  with  God  was  never  fully  solved  in 
the  Old  Testament.  The  prophets  always  deal  with  the  nation 
in  its  unity  as  the  object  of  wrath  and  forgiveness.  The  reli- 
gious life  of  the  individual  is  still  included  in  that  of  the  nation. 
When  we,  by  analogy,  apply  what  the  prophets  say  of  the  nation 
to  the  forgiveness  of  the  individual,  we  must  always  remember 
that  Israel's  history  starts  with  a  work  of  redemption — deliver- 
ance from  Egypt.  To  this  objective  proof  of  Jehovah's  love  the 
prophets  look  back,  just  as  w^e  look  to  the  finished  work  of 
Christ.  In  it  is  contained  the  pledge  of  Divine  love,  giving 
confidence  to  approach  God  and  seek  His  forgiveness.  But 
while  the  Old  Testament  believer  had  no  difficulty  in  assuring 
himself  of  Jehovah's  love  to  Israel,  it  was  not  so  easy  to  find  a 
pledge  of  His  grace  to  the  individual,  and  especially  not  easy  to 
apprehend  God  as  a  forgiving  God  imder  personal  affliction. 
Here  especially  the  defect  of  the  dispensation  came  out,  and  the 
problem  of  individual  acceptance  with  God,  which  was  acutely 
realised  in  and  after  the  fall  of  the  nation,  when  the  righteous 
so  often  suffered  with  the  wicked,  is  that  most  closely  bound  up 
with  the  interpretation  of  the  atoning  sacrifices  of  the  Levitical 
rituaL 


LECT.  XI.  EXOD.  AND  DEUT.  431 


Lecture  XI. 

Note  1,  p.  310. — Berachoth  Bab.,  5a  (p.  234  in  Schwab's 
French  translation,  Paris,  1871).  Megilla  Jer.,  cited  in  Lect. 
VI.  p.  174.  Compare  "Weber,  op.  cit.  p.  89  seq.,  and  Dr.  M. 
Wise  in  the  Hebrew  Review,  vol.  i.  p.  12  seq.  (Cincinnati,  1880). 

Note  2,  p.  317. — It  is  of  some  importance  to  realise  how 
completely  Deuteronomy  covers  the  same  ground  with  the  First 
Legislation.       The  following    table  exhibits    the    facts    of   the 


Exod.  xxi.  1-11  (Hebrew  slaves)— Dent.  xv.  12-18. 

,,       „     12-14  (Murder  and  asylum) — Deut.  xix.  1-13. 

,,       „     15,  17  (Otfences  against  parents) — Deut.  xxi.  18-21. 

,,       „     16  (Manstealing) — Deut.  xxiv.  7. 

,,       „     18 — xxii.  15.     Compensations  to  be  paid  for  various  injuries. 
This  section  is  not  repeated  in  Deuteronomy,  except  as 
regards  the  law  of  retaliation,  Exod.   xxi.  23-25,  which 
in  Deut.  xix.  16-21  is  applied  to  false  witnesses. 
Exod.  xxii.  16,  17  (Seduction)— Deut.  xxii.  28,  29. 

,,       ,,     18  (Witch)— Deut.  xviii.  10-12. 

,,       ,,     19 — Deut.  xxvii.  21. 

„       ,,     20  (Worship  of  other  gods) — Deut.  xiii.,  xvii.  2-7. 

,,       ,       21-24   (Humanity  to   stranger,   widow,   and  orphan) — Deut. 
xxiv.  17-22. 

,,       ,,     25  (Usury)— Deut.  xxiii.  19. 

,,       ,,     26,  27  (Pledge  of  raiment)— Deut.  xxiv.  10-13. 

„       ,,     28  (Treason) — Not  in  Deuteronomy. 

,,     29,  30  (First  fruits  and  firstlings)— Deut.   xxvi.  1-11,  xv.  19- 
23. 

,,       ,,     31  (Unclean  food)— Deut.  xiv.  2-21.     Tlie  particular  precej^t 
of  Exodus  occupies  only  ver.  21  ;  but  the  principle  of 
avoiding  food  inconsistent  with  holiness  is  expanded. 
Exod.  xxiii.  1  (False  witness) — Deut.  xix.  16-21. 

"  "  ^' ?' o   {  (Just  judgment)— Deut.  xvi.  18-20. 

))  >»  ")  «>  ">  ) 

,,  „  4,  5  (Animals  strayed  or  fallen) — Deut.  xxii.  1-4. 

„  „  9-11  (Sabbatical  year)— Deut.  xv.  1-11. 

,,  „  12  (Sabbath  as  a  provision  of  humanity) — Deut.  v.  14,  15. 

,,  „  13  (Names  of  other  gods) — Deut.  vi.  13. 

„  „  14-I9a  (Annual  feasts) — Deut.  xvi.  1-17. 

,,  „  19b  (Kid  in  mother's  milk) — Deut.  xiv.  21. 

The  parallel  becomes  still  more  complete  when  we  observe 
that  to  the  Code  of  Deuteronomy  is  prefixed  an  introduction, 
iv.  44 — xi.  32,  containing  the  ten  commandments,  and  so  answer- 
ing to  Exod.  XX. 


432  THE  ARK.  lect.  xi. 

Note  3,  p.  319. — According  to  Exod.  xxxiii.  7  ;  Num.  x. 
33,  tlie  sanctuary  is  outside  the  camp  and  at  some  considerable 
distance  from  it,  both  when  the  people  are  at  rest  and  when 
they  are  on  the  march.  That  the  ark  precedes  the  host  is 
implied  in  Exod.  xxiii.  20,  xxxii.  34  ;  Deut.  i.  33.  The  same 
order  of  march  is  found  in  Joshua  iii.  3,  4,  where  the  distance 
between  the  ark  and  the  host  is  2000  cubits,  and  the  reason  of 
this  arrangement,  as  in  Num.  I.  c,  is  that  the  ark  is  Israel's 
guide.  (Comp.  Isa.  Ixiii.  1 1  seq^  That  the  ark  when  at  rest 
stood  outside  the  camp  is  implied  also  in  Num.  xi.  24  seg'., 
xii.  4.  This  corresponds  with  the  usage  of  the  early  sanctuaries 
in  Canaan,  which  stood  on  high  points  outside  the  cities  (1  Sam. 
ix.  14).  So  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem  originally  stood  outside 
the  city  of  David,  which  occupied  the  lower  slope  of  the  Temple 
hill  (comp.  Micah  iv.  8,  which,  on  the  correct  rendering,  places 
the  original  seat  of  the  kingdom  on  Ophel).  But,  as  the  city 
grew,  ordinary  buildings  encroached  on  the  Temple  plateau 
(Ezek.  xliii.  8).  This  appears  to  Ezekiel  to  be  derogatory  to  the 
sanctity  of  the  house  (comp.  Deut.  xxiii.  14),  and  is  the  reason 
for  the  ordinance  set  forth  in  symbolic  form  in  Ezek.  xlv.  1  seq., 
xlviii.,  where  the  sanctuary  stands  in  the  middle  of  Israel,  but 
isolated,  the  priests  and  the  Levites  lodging  between  it  and 
the  laity,  as  in  the  Levitical  law,  Num.  i.-iii.  Here,  as  in 
other  cases,  the  Levitical  law  appears  as  the  latest  stage  of  the 
historical  development. 

Note  4,  p.  320. — Of  the  immense  literature  dealing  with 
the  linguistic  and  other  marks  by  which  the  Levitical  document 
may  be  separated  out,  it  is  enough  to  refer  particularly  to 
Noldeke,  UntersuchuTigeii  %ur  Kritik  des  A.  T.,  Kiel,  1869  ; 
Wellhausen,  Composition  des  Hexateiichs^  in  the  Jahrb.  f.  D.  T. 
1876,  p.  392  seq.  531  seq.;  1877,  p.  407  seq.,  and  many 
important  articles  by  Kuenen  in  the  Theologisch  Tijdschrift.  The 
document  contains  also  a  brief  sketch  of  the  history  from  the 
creation,  and  includes  most  of  the  statistical  matter  of  Joshua. 
Noldeke  gives  the  following  determination  of  the  Levitical  parts 
of  the  middle  books.  (An  asterisk  means  that  only  part  of  the 
verse  is  Levitical.) 

Exod.  i.  1-5,  7,  13,  14  ;  ii.  23*,  24,  25  ;  vi.  2-13,  16-30  ; 
vil  1-13,  19,  20*;  22  ;  viii  1-3,  11*,  12-15  ;  ix.  8-12  ;  xi.  9, 
10;  xii.  1-23,  28,  37a,  40-51  ;  xiii.  1,  2,  20  ;  xiv.  1-4,  8,  9, 
10*,   15-18,  21*,   22,  23,  26,  27*,  28,  29  ;  xv.    22,  23*,  27  ; 


LECT.  XI.  CITIES  OF  REFUGE.  433 

xvL  ;  xvii.  ;  xix.  2a  ;  xxiv.  15-1 8a  ;  xxv.  1 — xxxi.  17  ;  xxxv. — ■ 
xl. 

Leviticu.s  i.  1 — xxvi.  2  ;  xxv.  19-22  ;  xxvi.  4G  ;  xxvii. 

Numbers  i,  1 — viii.  22  ;  ix.  1 — x.  28  ;  xiii,  1-1 7a,  21,  25, 
26*,  32*;  xiv.  1-10,  26-38  ;  xv.  ;  xvi.  la,  2*,  3-11,  16-22,  23, 
24*,  26*  27*,  35;  xvii. — xix;  xx.  1*,  2-13,  22-29  ;  xxi.  4*, 
10,  11  ;  xxii.  1  ;  xxv.  1-19  ;  xxvi.  l-9a,  12-58,  59*,  60-66  ; 
xxvii;  (xxx.  2-17?);  xxxii  ;  xxxii.  2  (3?),  4-6,  16-32,  33*, 
40;  xxxiii.  1-39,  41-51,  54  ;  xxxiv.  ;  xxxv.  ;  xxxvi. 

Some  passages  in  this  list  have  imdergone  changes,  and  all 
the  Levitical  laws  are  not  of  one  hand  and  date,  though  they 
form  a  well-marked  class.  Other  recent  inquirers  have  been 
chiefly  occupied  with  this  further  analysis  of  the  Levitical 
legislation.  So  far  as  Noldeke  goes,  his  table  is  generally 
accepted  as  careful  and  correct  in  essentials.  On  the  language 
of  this  part  of  the  Pentateuch  compare  Eyssel,  De  Elohistae 
Pentateu^hi  sermone  (Leipzig,  1878),  whose  grammatical  material 
is,  however,  better  than  his  historical  conclusion. 

A  good  example  of  the  fundamental  difference  in  legal  style 
between  the  Levitical  laws  and  the  Deuteronomic  Code  is 
found  in  Num.  xxxv.  compared  with  Deut.  xix.  In  Numbers, 
the  technical  expression  city  of  refuge  is  repeated  at  every 
turn.  In  Deuteronomy  the  word  refuge  does  not  occur,  and 
the  cities  are  always  described  by  a  periphrasis.  In  Numbers 
the  phrase  for  "  accidentally  "  is  bish'gaga,  in  Deut.  hib'li  da'at 
The  judges  in  the  one  are  "  the  congregation,"  in  the  other 
"  the  elders  of  his  city."  The  verb  for  hate  is  different.  The 
one  account  says  again  and  again  "  to  kill  any  person,"  the 
other  "  to  kill  his  neighbour."  The  detailed  description  of  the 
difference  between  murder  and  accidental  homicide  is  entirely 
diverse  in  language  and  detail.  The  structure  of  the  sentences 
is  distinct,  and  in  addition  to  all  this  there  is  a  substantial  dif- 
ference in  the  laws  themselves,  inasmuch  as  Deuteronomy  says 
nothing  about  remaining  in  the  city  of  refuge  till  the  death  of 
the  high  priest.  On  a  rough  calculation,  omitting  auxiliary 
verbs,  particles,  etc.,  Num.  xxxv.  11-34  contains  19  nouns  and 
verbs  which  also  occur  in  Deut.  xix.  2-13,  and  45  which  do 
not  occur  in  the  parallel  passage  ;  while  the  law,  as  given  in 
Deuteronomy,  has  50  such  words  not  in  the  law  of  Numbers. 

Note  5,  p.  328. — J ehovistic  narrative — Gen.  vi.  5-8  ;  vii.  1-5, 
10,  12,  16b,  17,  23  ;  viii.  26,  3a,  6-12,  13b,  20-22. 


434  LEA  VEN.  lect.  xi. 

Elohistic  narrative— vi.  9-22  ;  vii.  6,  11,  13-16a,  18-22,  24; 
viii.  l,'2a,  3b-5,  13a,  14-19;  ix.  1-17.  A  few  words  and 
clauses  are  added  by  the  redactor. 

Note  6,  p.  337. — The  protected  stranger  is  still  known  in 
Arabia.  Among  the  Hodheil  at  Zeimeh  I  found  in  1880  an 
Indian  boy,  the  orphan  child  of  a  wandering  Suleimany  or  tra- 
velling smith,  who  was  under  the  protection  of  the  community, 
every  member  of  which  would  have  made  the  lad's  quarrel  his 
own.  The  daJchtl,  as  he  is  called,  is,  as  it  were,  adopted  into  the 
tribe,  and  his  lack  of  relations  to  help  him  is  supplemented  by 
the  whole  community.  So,  no  doubt,  in  early  Hebrew  times  the 
Ger  is  in  process  of  conversion  into  an  Israelite.  In  Deutero- 
nomy the  relation  is  somewhat  looser,  or  rather  the  distinctive 
position  of  an  Israelite  is  more  sharply  defined.  In  Deut.  xiv. 
21,  unclean  food  which  the  First  Legislation  commands  to  be 
thrown  to  the  dogs  may  be  given  to  the  Ger.  In  the  Levitical 
Legislation  the  word  Ger  is  already  on  the  way  to  assume  its 
later  technical  sense  of  proselyte.  I\  is  noteworthy  that  in  the 
Levitical  law  the  opposite  of  Ger  i.  mtX,  avro-^diov,  that  is,  one 
who  belongs  to  the  old  inhabitants  of  Canaan.  In  the  earlier 
times  the  autochthonous  poj^ulation  were  not  the  Israelites  but 
the  Canaanites  ;  and  so  still  in  1  Kings  iv.  31  [v.  11],  Ezrahite 
seems  to  be  the  name  of  a  non-Israelite  family.  See  Lagarde, 
Orientalia  IL,  p.  25  seq. 

Note  7,  p.  341. — In  Amos  iv.  5,  the  general  thought  is  that 
the  people's  ritual  zeal  pleases  themselves  but  not  Jehovah.  But 
when  the  prophet  draws  particular  attention  to  the  fact  that  they 
"  burn  a  thank-offering  of  leaven,"  he  plainly  does  so  in  an  un- 
favourable sense.  Now  according  to  Lev.  ii.  1 1  the  leaven  for- 
bidden in  fire-olferings  includes  not  only  yeast  but  grape-honey 
{dehdsh,  the  modern  dibs).  We  are  therefore  justified  in  connect- 
ing the  expression  with  the  grape-cakes  (D''33y  ''ti'"''C*J<)  in  Hosea 
iii.  1,  which  the  prophet  sarcastically  says  that  the  false  gods 
love,  implying  that  they  were  ofl'ered  to  them  on  the  altar.  For 
the  ashhhim  are  pressed  cakes,  and  so  plainly  identical  with  the 
Syriac  h'btge  (Bernstein,  ChresL,  p.  2),  composed  of  meal,  oil,  and 
dibs.  These  sweet  cakes  appear  in  connection  with  a  sacrificial 
feast  in  2  Sam.  vi.  19,  Heb.,  but  the  presentation  of  them  on  the 
altar  appears  to  have  been  regarded  as  one  of  the  Dionysiac 
features  of  the  Baal- worship  \\i.th  which  in  the  eighth  century  the 
religion  of  Jehovah  had  been  mixed.    An  anti-Dionysiac  element 


LECT.  XII.  STEPS  OF  ALTAR.  435 

appears  also  in  the  vow  of  the  Nazarites,  to  whom  Amos  attaches 
weight  as  representatives  of  true  religion  (Amos  ii.  11;  comp. 
ii.  8  ;  Hos.  iv.  11).  The  point  is  interesting  as  an  early  indica- 
tion of  the  line  of  thought  which  underlies  the  ritual  observ- 
ances of  holiness  in  the  Deuteronomic  Code. 

Lecture  XII. 

Note  1,  p.  358. — Exod.  xx.  26  is  addressed  not  to  the  priests 
but  to  Israel  at  large,  and  implies  that  any  Israelite  may  approach 
the  altar.  Comp.  Exod.  xxi.  14,  and  contrast  Num.  iv.  15,  xviii. 
3.  That  the  old  law  allows  any  Israelite  to  approach  the  altar 
appears  most  clearly  from  the  prohibition  of  an  altar  with  steps, 
lest  the  worshipper  should  expose  his  person  to  the  holy  struc- 
ture. In  the  case  of  the  Levitical  priests  this  danger  was  pro- 
vided against  in  another  way,  by  the  use  of  linen  breeches  (Exod. 
xxviii.  43).  In  the  case  of  the  brazen  altar,  which  was  five  feet 
high,  or  of  Solomon's  huge  altar,  ten  cubits  in  height,  there  must 
have  been  steps  of  some  kind  (Lev.  ix.  22),  and  for  Ezekiel's 
altar  (xliii.  17)  this  is  expressly  stated.  The  important  distinc- 
tion between  the  altars  of  Exod.  xx.,  which  are  approached  by 
laymen  in  their  ordinary  dress,  and  the  brazen  altar  approached 
by  priests  protected  against  exposure  by  their  special  costume, 
Avas  not  understood  by  the  later  Jews,  and  consequently  it  was 
held  that  the  prohibition  of  steps  (ma'alot)  did  not  prevent  the 
use  of  an  ascent  of  some  other  kind — as  for  example  a  sloping 
bridge  or  mound  (see  the  Targuni  of  Jonathan  on  our  passage, 
and  also  Rashi's  Commentary).  In  the  second  Temple,  the  altar 
was  a  vast  platform  of  unliewn  stone  approached  by  a  sloping 
ascent  (Joseph.,  B.  /.,  Lib.  v.,  cap.  5,  §  6  ;  Mishna,  Zebachim  v  , 
Taraid  i.  4).  But  the  expression  ma'alot  seems  to  cover  all 
kinds  of  ascent,  and  the  risk  of  exposing  the  person  to  the  altar 
would  be  unaftected  by  the  nature  of  the  ascent.  In  fact  with  a 
large  altar  the  priest  could  not  put  the  blood  of  a  victim  on  the 
four  horns  without  standing  and  walking  on  tlie  altar  (Zebachim, 
1.  c),  which  is  clearly  against  the  spirit  of  Exod.  xx.,  except  on 
the  understanding  that  that  law  docs  not  apply  to  priests  appro- 
priately clad  for  the  office. 

Note  2,  p.  3C0. — I  give  here  some  fuller  details  of  the 
evidence  on  this  important  topic. 

V.  Except  in  the  Levitical  legislation  and  in  Chronicles,  Ezra, 


436  LEVITES.  lect.  xir. 


and  Nehemiali,  where  the  \is,us  loqiiendi  is  conformed  to  the  final 
form  of  the  Pentateuchal  ordinance,  Levite  never  means  a  sacred 
minister  who  is  not  a  priest,  and  has  not  the  right  to  offer 
sacrifice.  On  the  contrary,  Levite  is  regularly  used  as  a  priestly 
title.  See  the  list  of  texts  in  Wellhausen,  Geschichte,  p.  150.  The 
only  passage  to  the  contrary  is  1  Kings  viii.  4,  where  "  the  priests 
and  the  Levites  "  appear  instead  of  "  the  Levite  priests."  But 
here  the  particle  "  and  " — a  single  letter  in  Hebrew — appears  to 
be  an  insertion  in  accordance  with  the  later  law.  The  Chronicler 
still  reads  the  verse  without  the  "and"  (2  Chron.  v.  5).  The 
older  books  know  a  distinction  between  the  high  priest  and  lower 
priests  {e.g.  1  Sam.  ii.  35,  36),  but  all  alike  are  priests,  that  is, 
do  sacrifice,  wear  the  ephod,  etc.  The  priesthood  is  God's  gift 
to  Levi  (Deut.  x.  8,  xviii.  1,  xxi.  5,  xxxiii.  8  seq.),  and  Jeroboam's 
fault,  according  to  1  Kings  xii.  31,  was  that  he  chose  priests  who 
were  not  Levites.  From  the  first,  no  doubt,  there  must  have  been 
a  difference  between  the  chief  priest  of  the  ark  (Aaron,  Eli, 
Abiathar,  Zadok)  and  his  subordinate  brethren,  but  there  is  no 
trace  of  such  a  distinction  as  is  made  in  the  Levitical  law. 

2°.  Ezekiel  knows  nothing  of  Levites  who  were  not  priests  in 
time  past  ;  he  knows  only  the  Zadokite  Levites,  the  priests  of  the 
Temple,  and  other  Levites  who  had  formerly  been  priests,  but 
are  to  be  degraded  under  the  new  temple,  because  they  had 
ministered  in  the  idolatrous  shrines  of  the  local  high  places. 
Tlie  usual  explanation  that  these  Levites  were  the  sons  of 
Ithamar  is  impossible.  For  the  guild  of  Ithamar  appears  only 
after  the  Exile  as  the  name  of  a  subordinate  family  of  priests  who 
were  never  degraded  as  the  prophet  prescribes.  Moreover,  Ezek. 
xlviii.  11-13  clearly  declares  that  all  Levites  but  the  Zadokites 
shall  be  degraded.  Ezekiel's  Levites  are  the  priests  of  the  local 
high  places  whom  Josiah  brought  to  Jerusalem,  and  who  were 
supported  there  on  offerings  which  the  non-priestly  Levites  under 
the  Levitical  law  had  no  right  to  eat. 

3°.  In  Deuteronomy  all  Levitical  functions  are  priestly,  and  to 
these  functions  the  whole  tribe  was  chosen  (x.  8,  xxi.  5).  The 
summary  of  Levitical  functions  in  x.  1  is  (l)  ^o  car?'!/  the  ark, 
M-hich  in  old  Israel  was  a  priestly  function  (Lect.  IX.  note  7) ;  (2) 
to  stand  before  Jehovah  and  minister  to  Him.  This  expression  in- 
variably denotes  priesthood  proper  ;  see  especially  Ezek.  xliv.  1 3, 
15  ;  Jer.  xxxiii.  18,  21,  22.  The  Levites  of  the  later  law  minister 
not  to  God  but  to  Aaron,  Num.  iii.  6  ;  (3)  to  bless  in  JehovaJis 


LECT.  xir.  UNCLEAN  ANIMALS.  437 

name.  Tliis  in  the  Levitical  law  is  the  office  of  Aaron  and  his  sons 
(Num.  vi.).  Accordingly  in  Dent,  xviii.  1  seq.^  the  whole  tribe 
of  Levi  has  a  claim  on  the  altar  gifts,  the  first-fruits  and  other 
priestly  offerings,  and  any  Levite  can  actually  gain  a  share  in 
these  by  going  to  Jerusalem  and  doing  priestly  service.  In  the 
Levitical  law  common  Levites  have  no  share  in  these  revenues,  but 
are  nourished  by  the  tithes  and  live  in  Levitical  cities.  There  were 
no  Levitical  cities  in  this  sense  in  the  time  of  the  Deuteronomii^t, 
for  all  those  mentioned  in  Joshua — in  passages  which  are  really 
part  of  the  Levitical  law — lay  outside  the  kingdom  of  Judah. 
And  Deuteronomy  knows  nothing  of  a  Levitical  tithe,  though  it 
could  not  have  failed  to  be  mentioned  in  chap,  xviii.  if  it  had 
existed.  The  Levite  who  is  not  in  service  at  the  sanctuary  is 
always  represented  as  a  needy  sojourner,  without  visible  means 
of  support,  and  this  agrees  with  Judges  xvil  7,  8  ;  1  Sam.  ii.  36. 
That  the  priesthood  of  Dan  was  a  Levitical  priesthood 
descended  from  Moses  is  generally  admitted.  In  Judges  xviii. 
30,  the  N  which  changes  Moses  to  Manasseh  is  inserted  above  the 

line  thus  :  riiJ^D,  Moses  ;  Hti^  D,  Manasseh.  The  reading  of  our 
English  Bible  was  therefore  a  correction  in  the  archetype  {mjjra, 
p.  70).  On  the  whole  subject  of  the  Levites  before  the  Exile, 
see  especially  Graf  in  Merx's  Archii\  i.  ;  Kuenen,  Thcol.  Tijdsdir., 
1872  ;  and  Wellhausen,  Gesch.,  Kap.  iv. 

Note  3,  p.  366. — For  the  detailed  proof  of  these  statements 
see  my  article  in  the  Journal  of  Philology,  vol.  ix.  p.  97  seq.  If 
the  nnj?  of  Isa.  Ixvi.  1 7  is  Adonis  (Lagarde,  Hieron.  Qu.  Heh.,  p. 
72  ;  Leipz.,  1868),  the  eating  of  swine's  flesh  is  the  weU-known 
custom  of  devouring  the  hostile  totem.  But  see  against  this 
Cheyne,  Isaiah  (iL  124).  In  other  cases  the  rite  consisted  in 
the  sacramental  use  of  one's  own  totem.  To  the  animal  gods 
mentioned  in  my  essay  add  the  quail-god  Eslimun  (Lagarde, 
Proverhien,  p.  81),  from  whom  Delos  takes  the  name  Orty gia. 

No  doubt  some  of  the  laws  of  abstinence  simply  expressed 
natural  feelings  of  dipgust  at  vile  things,  and  became  sacred  on 
the  principle  explained  at  p.  378.  Compare  in  the  Arabic  field, 
the  disgust  at  locusts,  Div.  Hodh.  116,  1,  in  Niildeke's  transl.  of 
Tabary,  p.  203.  The  lizard  was  not  eaten  in  Mecca  ;  Bokhary, 
vi.  190  (Biilaq  ed.).  The  law  against  eating  blood  may  be 
compared  with  the  objection  of  some  Arabs  to  eat  a  heart,  Wiis- 
tenfeld,  Register ,  407.     The  most  curious  law  of  food  is  the  pro- 


438  Marriage  LAWS.  lect.  xn. 


hibitioD  of  seething  a  kid  in  its  motlier's  milk,  common  to  tlie 
first  code  and  l)euteronomy.  As  early  sacrifices  were  boiled,  the 
ordinance  means  that  the  sacrifice  must  not  be  boiled  in  milk, 
which  from  the  fermenting  quality  of  the  latter  may  be  a 
variety  of  the  law  against  leaven  in  ritual.  Milk,  no  doubt, 
was  generally  eaten  in  a  sour  form  (Arabic  aqit^  Bokhary,  vi. 
193).  "Its  mother's  milk,"  as  the  Jewish  tradition  recognises, 
means  simply  goat's  milk,  which  was  that  in  general  use  (Prov. 
xxvii.  27). 

Note  4,  p.  369.  See  Journal  of  Philology,  ut  supra,  pp. 
86,  94  ;  Pococke,  Speximen  (ed.  White),  p.  325  ;  Abu'l  Sa'ud, 
Tafsir,  i.  284  ;  Shahrastany,  Alilal  wa-nihal,  p.  440.  Examples 
in  Kitdb  el  Agh.  i.  9,  10  ;  Sprenger,  Leb.  Moh.,  i.  86,  133.  I 
reserve  for  future  publication  extracts  from  Tabary's  Com.  on 
the  Koran  (MS.  of  the  Vice-regal  library  in  Cairo)  and  from  the 
Asbdh  of  El  Wahidy  (MS.  of  A.H.  627,  penes  me).  The  advance 
in  the  laws  of  forbidden  degrees  from  the  Deuteronomic  Code 
through  the  "  Framework"  (Deut.  xxvii.)  and  Ezekiel  (xxii.  10, 
1 1)  to  the  full  Levitical  law  is  one  of  the  clearest  proofs  of  the 
true  order  of  succession  in  the  Pentateuchal  laws.  Marriage 
with  a  half-sister  was  known  among  the  Phoenicians  in  the  time 
of  Achilles  Tatius,  and  indeed  forbidden  marriages,  including 
that  with  a  father's  wife,  seem  to  have  been  practised  pretty 
openly  in  Roman  Syria  down,  to  the  fifth  Christian  century. 
See  Bruns  and  Sachau,  Syrisch- Roniisches  Eechtsbuch,  p.  30 
(Leipz.,  1880). 

Note  5,  p.  382. — The  original  meaning  of  happer,  to  atone, 
is  still  disputed.  Wellhausen,  in  his  important  note  on  the 
subject  {Geschichte,  p.  66),  starts  from  Gen.  xxxii.  20  [21],  "I 
will  kapper  his  face  with  the  present,"  and  compares  Gen.  xx. 
16,  Job.  ix.  24,  But  the  sense  "cover"  will  not  explain  Isa. 
xxviii.  18,  where,  on  the  contrary,  the  verb  has  its  well-known 
Syriac  sense,  eKfxda-creLV  ;  Harkl.  John  xi.  2,  xii.  3,  xiii.  5  ; 
Syro-Hex.,  Ep.  Jer.  xiii.  24  ;  iIoff"mann's  Bar  Ali,  5924.  Thus 
D'':3  "ISD  =  D''J3  n^n,  to  smooth  (wipe)  the  face,  blackened  or 
contracted  with  displeasure.  The  religious  sense,  as  Well- 
hausens  admits,  does  not  start  from  the  idea  of  covering  the 
face.  Except  in  the  Levitical  Law,  it  is  God  who  kipper 
(wipes  out)  sin,  so  that  "1DD  =  nnD  (I  note  in  passing  that  nPiD 
strike,  has  nothing  to  do  with  nriD,  wipe,  but  is  Aramaic  fc^riD  for 
ynD=J*nD,  with  softening  of  y  after  n).     This  notion  of  God 


LECT.  XII.  ATONEMENT.  439 

wiping  out  sin  is  the  pure  religious  idea  of  atonement,  as  we 
find  it  in  the  Prophets,  without  any  relation  to  sacrifice.  But 
in  common  life  an  offence  was  blotted  out  by  payment  of  com- 
pensation, as  we  see  in  the  First  Legislation,  and  this  payment, 
which  made  the  score  between  the  two  men  a  tabula  rasa,  was 
called  kojjher.  For  certain  offences,  apparently,  the  payment  was 
made  to  the  judge  at  the  sanctuary  (2  Kings  xii.  16,  Amos  ii.  8) ; 
or  a  sacrifice  was  oftered  (1  Sam.  iii.  14)  which,  on  the  oldest 
way  of  thought,  was  a  gift  to  appease  the  Divine  anger  (1  Sam. 
xx\d.  19,  compare  with  Psalm  xlv.  12  [13]).  Illegitimate  pay- 
ment to  a  judge  to  make  him  ignore  an  ofteiice  is  equally 
Jcopher,  and  in  the  then  state  of  justice  was  perhaps  the  com- 
monest application  of  the  word  ;  but  this  does  not  lie  in  the 
original  idea — kdpher  is  simply  the  compensation  which,  in  a 
primitive  form  of  the  law,  is  the  equivalent  of  an  offence.  The 
conception  that  sin  demands  a  compensation  paid  to  the  Divine 
judge  at  the  sanctuary  is  then  combined,  in  bloody  atoning  sac- 
rifices, with  the  notion  of  presenting  a  life  to  God.  This  idea, 
again,  has  a  simpler  and  a  more  complicated  form.  In  the 
simpler  form  the  life  of  the  sacrifice  is  simply  returned  to  God, 
because  it  belongs  to  Him.  But  in  other  forms  of  ritual  the 
blood,  which  is  assumed  to  be  living  blood,  is  applied  not  only 
to  the  altar,  but  to  the  worshipper.  So  we  find  it  in  the  cove- 
nant sacrifice,  Exod.  xxiv.  8,  and  in  forms  of  consecration,  Lev. 
viii.  23,  xiv.  6,  14.  The  parallel  to  this  is  the  Arabic  cere- 
mony, in  which  contracting  parties  dip  their  hands  in  a  pan  of 
blood,  and  are  called  "  blood-lickers "  (Ibn  Hisham,  125). 
Here,  as  in  many  similar  ceremonies  among  early  peoples,  the 
bond  of  blood  is  a  living  bond  of  brotherhood.  So  consecration 
by  blood  is  consecration  in  a  li\ang  union  to  Jehovah.  In 
the  ordinary  atoning  sacrifices  the  blood  is  not  applied  to  the 
people ;  but  in  the  higher  forms,  as  in  the  sacrifice  for  the  whole 
congregation  (Lev.  iv.  1 3  seq.),  the  priest  at  least  dips  his  hand  in 
it,  and  so  puts  the  bond  of  blood  between  himself,  as  the  people's 
representative,  and  the  altar,  as  the  point  of  contact  with  God. 
Another  form  of  atoning  ceremony,  in  which  a  live  goat  or  bird  is 
charged  to  bear  away  sin  or  leprous  impurity  (Lev.  xvi.  22,  xiv.  7), 
is  a  natural  symbolic  action  similar  to  that  in  which  in  old  Arabia 
a  live  bird  was  made  to  fly  away  with  the  impurity  of  a  woman's 
widowhood.  The  bird,  it  is  added,  died.  See  Lane,  s.v.  fadda 
VIIL,  and  an  Assyrian  analogy.  Records  of  the  Past,  ix.  151.    We 


440  PRIESTL  V  DUES.  LEcr.  xii. 

see  then  that  the  ultimate  form  of  the  atoning  ritual,  as  it  is 
found  in  the  day  of  atonement,  is  a  combination  of  many  different 
points  of  view — satisfaction  to  the  Judge  at  the  sanctuary,  the 
renovation  of  a  covenant  of  life  with  God,  the  banishment  of  sin 
from  His  presence  and  land  (comp.  Micah  vii.  19). 

Note  6,  p.  383. — One  of  the  chief  innovations  of  the  ritual 
law  is  the  increased  provision  for  the  priesthood.  This  occurs 
in  two  ways.  In  the  first  place  they  receive  a  larger  share  in 
the  gifts  which  on  the  old  usage  were  the  material  of  feasts  at 
the  sanctuary.  In  Deuteronomy  the  firtslings  are  eaten  by  the 
worshipper  at  the  annual  feasts,  the  priest  of  course  receiving  the 
usual  share  of  each  victim.  But  in  Num.  xviii.  18  they  belong 
entirely  and  absolutely  to  the  priest.  This  difference  cannot  be 
explained  away,  for  according  to  Deut.  xiv.  24  the  firstlings 
,  might  be  turned  into  money,  and  materials  of  a  feast  bonght  with 
them.  But  in  Num.  xviii.  17  it  is  forbidden  to  redeem  any 
firstling  fit  for  sacrifice.  Again,  in  Deuteronomy  the  produce  of 
the  soil,  but  not  of  the  herd,  was  tithed  for  the  religions  use  of 
the  owner,  who  ate  the  tithes  at  the  feasts.  But  in  the  Levitical 
law  the  tithe  includes  the  herd  and  the  flock  (Lev.  xxvii.  32), 
and  is  a  tribute  paid  to  the  Levites,  who  in  turn  pay  a  tithe  to 
the  priests  (Num.  xviii.).  This  is  quite  distinct  from  the  Deutero- 
nomic  poor-rate  or  tithe  of  the  third  year,  which  was  stored  in 
each  township  and  eaten  by  dependents  where  it  was  stored 
(Deut.  xxvi.  12,  13,  where  for  brought  away  read  consumed:  the 
tithe  was  consumed  where  it  lay  ;  see  ver.  1 4  Heb.).  The  Levitical 
tithe  might  be  eaten  by  the  Levites  where  they  pleased,  and  in 
later  times  was  stored  in  the  Temple.  It  appears  to  take  the 
place  under  the  hierarchy  of  the  old  tithe  paid  to  the  king 
(1  Sam.  viiL  15,  17).  Once  more,  the  priest's  share  of  a  sacrifice 
in  Deuteronomy  consists  of  inferior  parts,  the  head  and  maw, 
which  in  Arabia  are  still  the  butcher's  fee,  and  the  shoulder, 
which  is  not  the  choicest  joint  (Pseudo-Wakidy,  p.  15,  and 
Hamaker's  note).  In  fact  Exod.  xii.  9  requires  to  make  special 
provision  that  the  head  and  inwards  be  not  left  uneaten  in  the 
paschal  lamb,  which  proves  that  they  were  not  esteemed.  But 
in  the  Levitical  law  the  priests'  part  is  the  breast  and  the  leg 
(not  as  E.  V.  the  shoulder),  which  is  the  best  part  (1  Sam.  ix.  24). 

In  the  second  place,  the  Levitical  law,  following  a  hint  of 
Ezekiel  (xlv.  4,  5),  assigns  towns  and  pasture  grounds  to  the  priests 
and  Levites.     The  list  of  such  towns  in  Josh.  xxi.  is  part  of  the 


LECT.  XII.  JOSHUA.  441 

Levitical  law  and  not  of  the  old  history.  In  ancient  times 
many  of  these  towns  certainly  did  not  belong  either  to  priests 
or  Levites.  Gezer  was  not  conquered  till  the  time  of  Solomon 
(1  Kings  ix.  16).  Shechem,  Gibeon,  and  Hebron  had  quite  a 
different  population  in  the  time  of  the  Judges.  Anathoth  was  a 
priestly  city,  but  its  priests  held  land  on  terms  quite  different 
from  those  of  the  later  law  (Lect.  IX.  note  7). 

On  the  Levitical  modifications  of  the  festivals,  see  Hupfeld, 
Be  primitiva  et  vera  festorum  ratione,  Partic.  I.,  II.,  Halle,  1852  ; 
Partic.  III.,  1858  ;  Appendix,  1865  ;  and  Wellhausen,  Geschichte, 
Kap.  iii. 

Note  7,  p.  387. — The  application  of  this  principle  may  be 
extended  to  the  Levitical  parts  of  the  book  of  Joshua,  e.g.,  as  we 
saw  in  last  note,  to  the  list  of  Levitical  cities.  In  recent  con- 
troversy in  Scotland  it  has  often  been  affirmed  that  Josh.  xxii. 
proves  that  the  Deuteronomic  law  was  known  to  Joshua.  If 
that  narrative  does  assume  the  later  law,  this,  in  face  of  the 
evidence  already  adduced,  would  only  prove  that  the  chapter,  or 
part  of  it,  is  one  of  those  interpolations  which  have  been  shown 
above  to  exist  in  several  parts  of  the  Old  Testament.  HoUen- 
berg  has  proved  with  the  aid  of  the  LXX.  that  there  are  such 
interpolations  in  Joshua,  e.g.  one  from  Neh.  xi.  in  chap,  xv.,  and 
another,  mainly  borrowed  from  Deuteronomy,  in  xx.  3-6.  But 
in  fact  the  altar  was  not  a  local  altar  under  Exod.  xx.,  for  it  lay 
on  the  west  of  the  Jordan  and  was  of  huge  size,  whereas  the  old 
law  only  allows  small  altars  without  steps.  The  whole  narra- 
tive is  puzzling,  but  the  speeches  in  their  present  form  must  be 
late,  for  at  ver.  28  the  altar  is  said  to  be  constructed  on  the 
n"'i2n,  manner  of  building,  of  the  altar  before  the  mishhan. 
Mishhan,  which  means  the  divine  dwelling,  is  a  word  of  the 
Levitical  law  and  the  second  Temple,  and  the  altar  in  the 
author's  mind  is  not  the  small  brazen  altar  of  the  tabernacle, 
which  was  not  built,  but  the  huge  stone  altar  of  the  second 
Temple. 


INDEX. 


Aktba,  75,  174,  399. 

Al-tascliith,  190. 

Altar,  early  importance  of  the,  224  ; 
as  asylum,  336,  341,  353  ;  of 
Ahaz,  253 ;  of  second  Temple, 
435  ;  with  steps,  ih.  ;  law  of  one 
altar,  233,  352  j  consecration  of 
the,  376. 

Amos,  274,  280,  341. 

Ancient  poetry,  transmission  of,  198. 

Anonymous  books,  107. 

Antilegomena  in  the  0.  T.,  153,  170 
seq. 

Antiochus  Epiphanes,  82. 

Apocrypha,  40,  42,  134  seq.,  172 ; 
value  of,  138. 

Aquila,  76,  391,  399. 

Arabic  customs,  retaliation,  336 ; 
firstlings,  340  ;  marriage  law,  368  ; 
warfare,  ib. ;  sacred  lot,  429  ; 
widowhood,  368,  439  ;  Dakhil, 
434  ;    use  of  animal  food,  424. 

Aramaic,  48,  193. 

Archetype  of  Old  Testament,  74. 

Ark,  117  ;  at  Shiloh,  258  ;  not  men- 
tioned in  Deuteronomic  Code,  357  ; 
precedes  the  host,  319,  432  ;  borne 
by  priests,  427. 

Asaph  and  Korah,  Psalms  of,  194. 

Ashera,  226,  353. 

Astruc,  325,  419. 

Atonement,  note  on,  438  ;  great  day 
of,  376,  377. 

Baal,  79 ;  Tyrian,  222 ;  local  Baalim, 

229. 
Bensly,  Mr.,  407. 
Bible,  Hebrew,  arrangement  of,  130, 

131  ;    Protestant   translations   of, 

30  se^. 


Biblical  books,  often  anonymous,  107 

seq.  ;  titles  of,  107. 
Blood  not  to  be  eaten,  236,  341. 

Canon,    ecclesiastical,    35  seq.;   the, 

132  seq. ;  left  open  by  Calvin,  42  ; 

history  of,  149  ;  and  tradition,  168, 

169. 
Canticles,  173. 
Cappellus,  Ludovicus,  86. 
Carians,  249. 
Chronicles,  168,  219,  266  ;  compared 

with  Kings,  420  seq. 
Copyists,  early,  106. 
Covenant,  Mosaic,  299,  331 ;  Josiah's, 

245  ;  Ezra's,  55  seq. 
Criminal  laws,  336,  367. 

Dan,  Sanctuary  of,  227  ;  priesthood 
in,  359,  437. 

David  and  Goliath,  125  ;  Saul's  hos- 
tility to,  128. 

Davidic  Psalms,  192,  200. 

Daniel,  Book  of,  168,  171. 

Decadence  of  Israel,  344  seq.  ;  causes 
of,  347. 

Deuteronomic  code,  317 ;  basis  of 
Josiah's  reformation,  246  ;  relation 
to  Isaiah,  354,  365  ;  not  forged  by 
Hilkiah,  362 ;  laws  of  sanctity, 
365  ;  civil  laws  of,  367. 

Divination,  277  seq.;  and  prophecy 
281. 

Ecclesiastcs,  172  seq. 
Ecclesiasticits,  132,  144. 
Eli,  House  of,  256,  359. 
Ephod,  220,  226,  423. 
2  Esdras,  131,  149,  155,  407. 
Esther,  171,  172. 


444 


INDEX. 


Exegesis,    Protestant   and    Catholic, 

31,  32. 
Exodus  xxi. -xxiii.,  316,  336  seq. 
Ezekiel  xliv.,  249,  425  ;  His  Torah, 

374   stq.  ;    controversy  as  to  his 

book,  410. 
Ezra,  the  Scribe,  55,  158  ;  book  of, 

131,  170. 

Feasts,  annual,  257,  338,  341,  371. 
First  Legislation,  the,  316,  336  seq. 
Flood,  the,  327  scq. 
Forgeries  of  books,  25,  157  seq. 

GftR,  337,  434. 

Great  Synagogue,  156,  408. 

Haggada,  58,  168,  410. 

Hagiographa,  130,  160,  166. 

Halacha,  58,  64,  168,  174. 

Hasraonean  dynasty,  63. 

Hebrew,  so  called  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, 47,  48  ;  vowel  points  and 
accents,  50  ;  Bible,  MSS.  of,  repre- 
sent the  same  text,  69. 

Hercules,  pillars  of,  248. 

Hezekiah,  351,  354,  357. 

Higher  Criticism,  104,  105. 

High  places,  221,  225,  227,  235,  265  ; 
abolished  by  Josiah,  245,  351  seq  ; 
in  Deuteronomy,  352  seq. ;  priests 
of,  24.5,  360,  375,  476. 

Hillel,  75,  172. 

Historians,  method  of  Eastern,  325. 

Holiness,  in  Pentateuch,  209  seq.  ;  in 
Deuteronomy,  365  seq.;  in  Ezekiel, 
378  ;  Isaiah's  doctrine  of,  364. 

Hyrcanus,  John,  65,  144. 

Idolatry,  228,  230,  355. 

Isaiah,  attacks  the  idols,  355  ;  sanc- 
tity of  Zion,  355  seq.  ;  his  doctrine 
of  holiness,  364. 

Isaiah,  Book  of,  109. 

Ishbosheth  or  Eshbaal,  78,  79. 

Jashar,  Book  of,  403. 

Jehoiada,  247. 

Jehovah  (lahwe),  186,  231,  423. 

Jeremiah,  Chaps.    1.,   li.,  112,   402  ; 


Chap,  xxvii,,  113  seq.;  prophecies 
of,  against  the  nations,  118. 

Jerome,  36,  40,  41,  69,  132,  392. 

Josephus  and  the  Canon,  149,  408. 

Jubilees,  Book  oj\  73,  74,  98,  132, 
149. 

Judges,  Age  of  the,  220,  255. 

Kabbala,  146,  160. 

Kadhi  of  the  Arabs,  300,  319. 

Kemarim,  246. 

Kerethim  and  Pelethim,  249. 

Keri  and  Kethib,  71. 

Kid  in  mother's  milk,  438. 

Kirahi,  Rabbi  David,  43,  44. 

Kings,  Books  of,  123  seq. 

Law,  function  of  the,  269,  312  seq.  ; 

Pauline  view  of,  314. 
Law,  Oral,  60  seq.,  146. 
Law,    Prophets,    and    Psalms,    The, 

164. 
Leaven  in  sacrifice,  341,  434. 
Legal  Fictions,  385  seq. 
Levites,  358  seq. 
Levitical  law,   its  system,  209  seq., 

231  seq.  ;  unknown  to  Josiah,  246  ; 

in  Solomon's  temple,  248  seq.  ;  at 

Shiloh,  257  seq.;  to  Samuel,  261 

seq.  ;  to  the  prophets,  287  seq. 
Levitical  law-book,  317  seq.;  later 

than  Ezekiel,  375  seq. ;  origin  of, 

383  seq. 

Maccabee  Psalms,  196,  413. 
Mac9eba,  226,  353  seq. 
Maine,  Sir  H.,  385,  386. 
Marriages,  mixed,  254,  269  ;  ancient 

marriage  laws,  270,  368,  438. 
Massorets,  72. 
Meturgeman,  48,  135,  393. 
Midrash,  135,  420. 
Mishna,  63,  396. 
Morinus,  John,  86. 
Moses,  Judge  and  Lawgiver,  300,  334 ; 

his  writings,    320,   331  ;  Law   of, 

meaning  of  the  phrase,  309  seq., 

385  seq. 

Nehemiah,  56,  157 ;  his  book,  107, 
140. 


INDEX. 


445 


Old   Testamknt,  standard  text  of, 

74-76,  80,  81. 
Origen  and  his  Hexapla,  103,  392. 

Pentateuch,  contains  several  dis- 
tinct codes,  316;  not  written  by 
Moses,  320  seq.;  sources  of,  324; 
composite  structure  of,  325  seq.; 
Samaritan,  73  ;  iu  tlie  Synagogue, 
96,  160. 

Pharisees,  59,  61  seq.,  395. 

Philo,  136,  402,  428. 

Pirke  Ahoth,  151,  394. 

Poll  tax,  64,  376. 

Precedents,  legal,  300,  318. 

Priests,  358  ;  revenues  of,  252, 
440. 

Prophecy,  cessation  of,  142. 

Prophets,  their  work,  271  ;  mark  of 
true  prophets,  274  ;  Canaanite, 
279  ;  professional,  280  ;  consecra- 
tion of,  282  ;  prophets  and  priests, 
285  ;  their  inspiration,  289  seq.; 
writings  of,  296  ;  their  doctrine  of 
forgiveness,  301  ;  not  politicians, 
349  ;  their  ideal,  283,  294,  350  ; 
canon  of  the,  161. 

Proverbs,  Book  of,  121,  122,  403. 

Psalms,  titles  of,  110,  111,  190; 
text  of,  182  ;  five  books  of,  184  ; 
Davidic,  185,  192,  199  seq.,  202 
seq.  ;  Elohistic,  186  ;  Levitical, 
188  ;  age  of,  189  ;  typology  of, 
206  ;  imprecatory,  207. 

Psalm  li.,  416  ;  Ixxxvi.,  413. 

Psalter,  the,  163,  176  seq. 

Psalmody,  early,  in  Isi'ael,  204  seq. 

Panda  ExtraordinaricL,  70  seq. 

Rashi,    Rabbi   Solomon   of  Troyes, 

44. 
Redaction,  editorial,  112,  113. 
Reformation,  the,  11  seq. 
Reformers,  scholarship  of,  44,  45. 
Religion,    tribal    or    national,    271  ; 

popular,  of  Israel,  222,  272  seq.  ; 

prophetic,  273,  282. 
Reuchlin,  John,  43. 
Retaliation,  law  of,  336,  367. 
Revelation,  the  record  of,  16,   139  ; 
20 


close  of  the  age  of,  140  seq.  ;  Jew- 
ish theory  of,  144,  145. 

Sacrkd  dues,  338,  370,  440. 

Sacrifice,  Pentateuclial  law  of,  un- 
known to  Amos,  238,  287  ;  to 
Jeremiah,  287  seq.;  atoning,  210, 
372,  376,  381 ;  by  laymem  248, 
264,  358;  stated  sacrifice,  234, 
375,  383. 

Sacrificial  feasts,  236,  338. 

Sadducees,  395. 

Samaritans,  73,  398. 

Samuel,  259  seq.;  Books  of,  94-96. 

Sanctuary  as  seat  of  judgment,  334, 
358,  367  ;  plurality  of  sanctuaries 
in  the  old  law,  338  ;  abolished  iu 
Deuteronomy,  352  seq. 

Sanhedrin,  62. 

Scribes,  and  Pharisees,  54,  55  seq.  ; 
work  of,  57  ;  guilds  of,  57  ;  altered 
Pentateuchal  laws,  65  ;  the,  as 
critics,  67  seq..  77. 

Septuagint,  33,  84  5e^.,  99;  an  in- 
dependent witness  as  to  the  text, 
85  ;  value  of,  88  ;  its  variations 
from  the  Hebrew,  88-90,  103-130  ; 
Jewish  estimate  of,  101,  102. 

Shaddai,  423. 

Shiloh,  Temple  of,  256  seq. 

Sin  and  trespass  numey,  251,  372. 

Songs  of  degrees,  or  pilgrimage  songs, 
191. 

Square  characters  not  introduced  by 
Ezra,  81. 

Syncretism,  228,  353. 

TaberNxVCLE  or  Tent  of  Meeting, 
232. 

Targums,  70,  399. 

Temple  of  Solomon,  248  seq.,  373. 

Teraphim,  227,  423. 

Tikkune  Sopherim,  78,  400. 

Torah,  meaning  of,  292  seq.;  pro- 
phetic, 293  seq.  ;  Di\ine,  334  seq.  ; 
Mosaic,  297  ;  priestly,  293,  372, 
384  ;  Ezekiel's,  374  seq.  ;  Jewish 
estimate  of,  1 45  seq. 

Tradition  of  the  Scribes,  52,  53. 

Traditional  Law,  growth  of,  60,  61. 


446 


INDEX. 


Traditional  theory  of  0.  T.  history,  1  Vowel  points  and  accents,   72. 

208  seq. 
Trent,  Council  of,  37,  38. 


Unclean  animals,  365. 
Unpointed  text,  49  seq. 
Urijah,  253. 
Urim  and  Thummim,  428. 


Worship,  notion  of,  223  ;  popular 
in  Israel,  225  seg-.,  241  seq.; 
under  the  Second  Temple,  239, 
380. 

Zadokites,  254,  359,  374,  427. 


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"  As  pleasant  a  companion  for  the  leisure  hours  of  a  studious  and  thoughtful 
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*'  [t  would  be  sheer  atfectation  to  deny  the  fascination  exercised  by  the  '  An- 
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Young  Ireland. 

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"Young  Ireland"  is  a  memoir  of  the  few  stormy  years  in  Ireland  during 
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and  convicted  of  high  treason,  written  by  one  who  was  in  succession  the  fellow- 
prisoner  of  each  of  them,  and  has  seen  since  a  remarkable  career  in  Australin. 
The  book  is  founded  on  the  private  correspondence  of  the  leading  men  of  the 
period,  and  throws  a  searching  light  on  the  Irish  politics  of  the  present  day. 

"  Never  did  any  book  appear  so  opportunely.  But.  whenever  it  had  appeared, 
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and  so  statesmanlike  a  grasp  of  its  conditions,  it  would  have  been  a  book  of 
great  vhsly^."'— London  Spectator. 

A  History  of  Greece. 

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"While  I  cheerfully  acknowledge  my  obligations  to  Gibbon  and  Grote— the 
most  eminent  of  modern  historians— a  careful  study  of  the  Greek  writers  has  led 
me  to  differ  from  them  on  many  important  matters.  The  peculiar  feature  of  the 
present  work,  therefore,  is  that  it  is  founded  on  Hellenic  sources.  I  have  not 
hesitated  to  follow  the  Father  of  History  in  portrayintj  the  heroism  and  the  sac- 
rifices of  the  Hellenes  in  their  first  war  for  independence,  nor,  in  delineating  the 
character  of  that  epoch,  to  form  my  judgment  largely  from  the  records  he  has 
left  n^y— Extract  from  Preface. 

History  of  Herodotus. 

An  English  Version,  edited,  with  Copious  Notes  and  Appendices,  by 
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*'  Religion  and  Science  " ;  and  Professor  of  Geology  and  Natural 
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The  Atomic  Theory. 

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Elements  of  Geology: 

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Eevealed  Religion,  or  the  Truths  revealed  in 

Nature  and  Scripture. 

By  JOSEPH  LE  CONTE, 

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ISmo,  cloth.    Price,  SI. 50. 


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the  undivided  attention  of  the  reader.  We  commend  the  book  cordially 
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reared." — Boston  Journal. 

"  A  reverent  student  of  Nature  and  religion  is  the  best-qualified  man 
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the  latter  aspect  the  author's  method  is  an  eminently  wise  one.  He  ac- 
cepts whatever  science  has  proved,  and  he  also  accepts  the  divine  origin 
of  the  Bible.  Where  the  two  seem  to  conflict,  he  prefers  to  await  the  rec- 
onciliation, which  is  inevitable  if  both  are  true,  rather  than  to  waste  time 
and  words  in  inventing  ingenious  and  doubtful  theories  to  force  them  into 
seeming  accord.  Both  as  a  theologian  and  a  man  of  science,  Professor 
Le  Conte's  opinions  are  entitled  to  respectful  attention,  and  there  are  few 
who  will  not  recognize  his  book  as  a  thoughtful  and  valuable  contribution 
to  the  best  religious  literature  of  the  day." — New  York  World. 

D.  APPLE  TON  &-  CO.,  Publishers,  I,  3,  <5t^  5  Bond  St.,  N.  Y. 


BS1160.S66 

The  Old  Testament  in  the  Jewish  church; 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


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